"God Heard Their Groaning"

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Exodus 2:23-25

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Well this morning we hope to complete chapter 2 together in Exodus and as we make our way out of Exodus 2 into Exodus 3, it's hard for me to relay to you just the significance of where we're going in Exodus 3, not just in terms of the unfolding of the book of Exodus, but really one of the great mountaintops of the
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Old Testament. From the time we began Genesis 1 all the way up until the revelation of God to Moses, it's so significant that God reveals to Moses his name, the divine name, something that we've been perhaps waiting for and seeking after unbeknownst to us ever since we began reading the book of Genesis, and that's all where we're going.
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So it may just be another week in passing, but try to have some sense of expectation or anticipation for where we're going next week.
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In chapter 2, as we come to the end, really is the segue to that in chapter 3.
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This is sort of the narratival segue to take us away from Moses' upbringing and the circumstances where we left him in Midian to catch us up to speed to what
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God is doing as he's working out his arm of redemption in the land of Egypt according to his great promise.
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And so we're going to be looking intently at God's revelation to Moses, but here at the end of chapter 2 we get a little window into why
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God at this particular time is revealing himself to Moses. It's in relation to exactly what we've read in verses 23 through 25.
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Now, of course, Moses writing these first five books, when we come out of Genesis, we're seeing a lot of the same themes and images that we saw in Genesis here in Exodus 1 through 2.
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We saw when we began in Exodus chapter 1 that, just like Adam and Eve in the
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Garden of Eden, Israel, in the barren land of Egypt as it were, were nevertheless made fruitful, and they multiplied greatly under the abundance of God's blessing.
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And this is deliberately connecting the beginning of Exodus to the beginning of Genesis. Another connection we see between the beginning of Exodus and the beginning of Genesis is the bondage of sin.
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The result of sin in Genesis 3 we have here essentially in Exodus 1 and 2.
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The bondage, the result of the fall, the bondage, of course, physically of the
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Israelites made captive by brutal taskmasters, chained and beaten and humiliated.
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But, of course, we're meant to see the larger ramifications of the fall, not only physical bondage, but more importantly, spiritual bondage.
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From the fall, the mind of man, of course, being darkened, blinded, the affections of man being disordered, and therefore the relationship of man to his own will, to that which he knows is true and right, man's relationship to God as his creator and as his king, man's relationship to his spouse, to his household, to his neighbor, all of that completely disordered by the effects of the fall, leaving man in utter bondage.
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So we're keeping in mind the larger view we're giving and the connection between the fall of Genesis 3 and the bondage of God's people as we begin
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Exodus. This is all according to the outworking of God's promised redemption. We're going to look at that, the text before us, really in two parts and then we'll have an application with three points.
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So the first point, the first emphasis is in verse 23, the groaning of God's people.
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The second part, verses 24 and 25, is God's response,
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God's fourfold response, and then third we'll consider application with three points.
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So first, the groaning of God's people. Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died.
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Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage and they cried out and their cry came up to God because of the bondage.
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So we begin with this pharaoh, the king of Egypt has died.
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I don't know if the announcement went over the BBC airwaves like they did when Queen Elizabeth II died.
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We have a hard time garnering the significance of the passing of a monarch. Perhaps we were interested that the legacy of Queen Elizabeth II had in some ways come to a close.
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And maybe we were, I don't know, nostalgic. We were once under the monarch as well some centuries ago.
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But there seems to be some nostalgia for the United Kingdom here, even among Americans. There are some who are very interested in the royals for some bizarre reason.
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I don't know why they have such a pull on the American public's imagination. But ultimately the passing of a queen who's simply a queen on paper, a paper monarch, it really didn't affect us at all.
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You can tell from the text that there was a lot of hope bound up when this pharaoh died.
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When this pharaoh, who is aged, when he dies, perhaps then the new regime will grant some level of tolerance, some pullback of the brutality of the tyranny.
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We're reminded, first and foremost, we're reminded that though the tyrant has a power that seems limitless, that tyrant will have the same end as every man.
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I came across this poem, I'll just read an excerpt from it by Francis Beaumont, called
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On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey. Listen to this, so fantastic. Think how many royal bones sleep within these heaps of stones.
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Here they lie, had realms and lands who now lack strength to stir their hands.
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Where from their pulpits sealed with dust, the coffin being the pulpit, where from their pulpits sealed with dust they preach in greatness is no trust.
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Here the bones of birth have cried, though gods they were as men they died.
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The king of Egypt is dead. The people are now groaning.
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Groaning because though this king had died, the bondage has remained. Look at the connection.
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It happened in the process of time, the king of Egypt died, then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage.
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There seemed to be some level of hope that this is only a passing tyranny, and surely when this
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Pharaoh and his penchant for hatred against the Israelites, when he dies, surely then we'll find some measure of relief.
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But they find no relief, and so they begin to groan because of the bondage, and they begin to cry out.
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That which they had put their hope in has fallen short. We're reminded, first and foremost, we're reminded that though tyrants may live, tyrants will die.
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Only the Lord reigns forever. God reigns, though tyrants live, tyrants die, and the rule of tyrants dies with them.
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And so there's wisdom here in God's people learning to trust only in the
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Lord and in the power of his might. And we shouldn't be scathing toward the
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Israelites for pinning their hope on a regime change. If I've seen anything saturating the evangelical mind in the political realm for the past decade or so,
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I've seen Exodus 2 .23. We pin our hopes to the regime change. Surely this will bring about all that we need and all that we're seeking.
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So we learn, no, God reigns. We trust only in the Lord. Put not your trust in princes is the lesson we learn when we pin our ultimate hope to the changing tides of politics.
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The second thing that we see connecting verse 23 to 24 and 25 is God reigns even while his people suffer.
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It's not as though there's this seesaw. When God's people are blessed, that must mean God is in some active way reigning.
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And when God's people suffer, that must mean in some mysterious way God is not actively reigning. Well, that's clearly not the case.
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The Lord reigns. That's the refrain. That's the chorus for the psalmist. Psalm 98 is perhaps the greatest example.
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The Lord reigns. And of course, I've been sharing with some brethren yesterday.
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I've been looking more intently at the book of Revelation. It's amazing to see the significance of that through line.
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The God who reigns over all, the conquering king who often conquers as a king over his people and through his people who are simultaneously being conquered.
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It's the cruciform way of understanding the advance of the kingdom. The kingdom is advanced not despite suffering, but often through suffering.
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So God reigns though his people suffer. God reigns while his people suffer.
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God reigns in some ways. He exercises reign through the suffering of his people, the testimony of his word.
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Look at the groaning. Here's this king that has died. The new king has come. It brings absolutely no comfort, no relief from the bondage that they were experiencing.
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And so they groan. When Stephen in Acts chapter 7 summarizes
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Exodus 2 through 6, Exodus 1 through 6, he summarizes it in this way. The Lord in responding really to Moses from Exodus 6,
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I've surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and I have come down to deliver them.
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The groaning. He hears the groaning. I love what
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Walt Kaiser in his commentary said, misery finally found a voice. They've been miserable for centuries.
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But here what's highlighted is the groaning, the churning within them.
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They groan and they cry out to God. Egypt is an illustration of what the church will often encounter in the world.
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Egypt was the world of the day. We talk about John's condemnation of the world in his gospel.
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That could stand in for Rome or for Babylon or for Egypt here in the book of Exodus. It is the pinnacle of what we mean by the hostility of the world.
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The pomp and the luxury and the pride of the world. The deceptive, seductive bondage of the world.
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All of that is bound together with the land of Egypt. William Landells, in drawing out this analogy, says the church sees in her an illustration of what the intellect and muscle of man can accomplish when man's heart is alienated from God.
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You remember reading Genesis and we saw the Cainite civilization begin to prosper and flourish, the makers of art and engineering and technology.
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Meanwhile, those living under the shadows are the ones that are calling upon the name of the
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Lord. So there seems to be something to what man is capable of when he alienates his life from God.
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And the good gifts and the good ingenuity that God has given man as an image bearer, man's going to take dominion one way or the other.
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The problem is man's either going to take dominion as unto the Lord or he's going to take dominion against the
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Lord. And that really is the division between Abraham, let's say, and Abraham's progeny as opposed to Egypt's or the
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Cainites or Babylon or what have you. The Israelites were thus, this is
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Landells again, brought in contact to a world in its best and most attractive form and had to be taught by bitter experience what to expect from it.
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Here's the might, here's the power, here's the luxury, here's the security of the world.
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And if you want to stand apart from it, you're going to suffer. That's the lesson. And so they're brought to groaning.
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They begin to cry out for deliverance. And that leads, secondly, to God's response.
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Exodus 2, beginning in verse 24. God heard their groaning.
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And God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob, and God looked upon the children of Israel and God acknowledged them.
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So notice that God's response is a fourfold response. There's four activities and four times
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God is mentioned. God heard, God remembered, God looked,
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God acknowledged. This is in response, it doesn't appear that way on the face of the
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English text, but the fourfold response of God is in essence a response to the fourfold cry of the
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Israelites. Now, this looks like the Israelites are only groaning and crying, but it's compound verbs in the
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Hebrew. So there's two activities, two sets or two pairs of activities.
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In other words, four ways the Israelites are groaning and crying, and there's four responses of God to the groaning and crying of his people.
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He heard, he remembered, he looked, he knew. Probably a better translation.
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Acknowledged is great, but it's simply the verb to know, and the verb know is a Swiss Army knife verb.
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Hebrew has a lot of verbs that end up having all sorts of connotations. And so this has been translated elsewhere as save, to take pity, to become intimate with, to take responsibility for all of that.
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We saw that in Genesis. Adam knew his wife. It's the same verb, yada, in Hebrew. It can mean all sorts, have all sorts of connotations.
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So it's not just a mere acknowledgment. It's something deeply intimate. He knew them.
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Let's look at these responses of God. First, God heard.
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This is not just a passive hearing. It's not that God had not heard, and all of a sudden he begins to perk up his ears, if we can think of it in human terms, and what had not been heard is now being heard.
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That's not the significance here. What means is God is now preparing, or God is now inclined to respond to what he is hearing.
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So he's always hearing. He's always seeing. He's everywhere, at all times, in all places.
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He's infinite. He's omnipresent. And the hearing here means then this is not something new, but rather something that indicates
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God's activity in response. So God hears, meaning God hears in a way that he's now going to act.
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He's now going to respond to what he hears. It's what you wish for a two -year -old to do.
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They hear. They don't necessarily respond. If they were to understand the significance here, it's because they hear that now they're going to respond.
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Secondly, God remembered. Again, the idea here is not that somehow God had forgotten, and then he goes, oh, yeah, well,
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I forgot. In Egypt, I've got this whole thing going on. God, who has all knowledge, who is omniscient, of course, he is not capable of forgetting anything.
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He comprehends all things. So rather it means that he brings to mind as a way of response.
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He's now going to act on the basis of what he has remembered. In the same way, we often will find a psalmist praying or beseeching the
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Lord, remember me. And he's not implying you have somehow forgotten me, and now just remember that I'm here.
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He's saying, please respond to me. Don't forget me, meaning don't cast me off, but remember me, meaning draw me near.
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Remember me. Notice just the contrast. We're going to see this in the history of Israel as it unfolds.
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God is the God who remembers the covenant he has made. Israel is a people who forgets the covenant that God has made.
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And so we see this tremendous contrast between the faithful God who remembers what he has promised and a faithless people who forgets what
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God has promised, forgets what God has commanded, forgets what God has done for them, for their sake.
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And so they're filled with ingratitude and selfishness and every evil and vain thing.
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What a contrast between the Lord and the people of the Lord. And that's not them in the desert.
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That's us as the people of the Lord. Short memories and therefore short thanksgiving and very little contentment in our lives, though we're surrounded by comfort and luxury at almost every turn.
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Isn't it sad that we can remember the most trivial things? Doesn't that frustrate, frustrates me to no end? I pound into my memory paradigms, this is years ago, and I had to pass certain exams, and that's forgotten almost as soon as I walk out of the room.
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But then things that, some joke I heard when I was 13, I can remember. What is it? I don't want to remember that.
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The things that I want to remember, I don't remember. And the things that I do want to remember, I forget.
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Oh, you know, who will deliver me from this mind of death? What a contrast there is between the
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Lord and his people. So God remembering, he's now turning in response to that which he has remembered.
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And what is it that he has remembered? He remembers the covenant that he made with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
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In other words, the Abrahamic covenant. He made it with Abraham, and he confirmed it with Isaac, and confirmed it with Jacob.
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Notice how grace comes to people in bondage. It comes to them by way of covenant.
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Grace comes to people by way of covenant. God deals with all reality by way of covenant.
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There is nothing outside of the scope of covenantal interaction with God.
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If God interacts with anything that he has made, he does so by way of covenant.
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God's covenant is the cause of his grace. It's not something as an afterthought.
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It doesn't come later on. It doesn't say, well, we should probably get a piece, you know, you ever make a deal, we should probably get this on a piece of paper, or it's getting in writing, or could you email it to me so we have some record of it?
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This isn't God saying there should be a record. He's only acting because he made a covenant. All grace comes to us by virtue of the covenant that God has made.
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God did not turn his attention to Israel because, you know, they seem to be learning their lesson in Egypt, and they seem to really be mustering up some good character and integrity, and I think it's time for me to deliver them.
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No. God doesn't turn his attention to them because they're beginning to do some of the things that he had commanded that they had forgotten.
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They're beginning to clean up their act a little bit, take some steps of faith toward him. No. God does not give them any response of grace because of anything on their part, but only because he remembers the covenant that he himself had made, and remember the
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Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 15. It wasn't a covenant that Abraham made with God. Abraham didn't seek it, didn't ask for it, and he wasn't even allowed to participate in it, remember?
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You sit over here, and you watch me pass through the divided animal carcasses.
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So it's a unilateral covenant that God made with Abraham. This is what
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I will do for you, Abraham, and I will face the curse of the blessing that I have promised.
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So God remembered. Third, God looked. God heard. God remembered.
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God looked. Again, the idea, the eyes of the Lord are in every place.
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It was someone's prayer on Thursday night. The idea is here not that God does not see.
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Or that this is somehow a passive glance, or some sort of external observation, but rather this is something intent.
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Activity. He's watching with pity, and he's about to engage. He has an eye of compassion, and now he's moved.
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He will not, he cannot look away. One of the great emphases that Stuart Elyot brought in the
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Bolton Messages past year, when he was in John 20, and he said Jesus can't look away.
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He can't be away from his people in need. Where there's doubt, where there's failure, he has to show up.
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And we see that even here. God cannot, will not, look away.
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The eye of compassion. And then lastly, this Swiss Army verb,
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God knew. God acknowledged. The NIV, God was filled with concern for them. That's pretty good.
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You know, give credit where credit's due. That's not too bad for that NIV. The idea is simply that God is looking with this personal, intimate knowledge, or desire, or regard for them.
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In other places, it could be translated, it is translated, safe. To know is to save.
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He's going to now engage himself with saving the people he has known. Now altogether, this is all familiar from the book of Genesis.
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This activity, it's all condensed for us here in verses 24 and 25, but we could expand it and see this is how
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God has been toward his people throughout the whole book of Genesis. This is who God is. This is how
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God acts to the people that he has made promises to. He's not distant.
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He's not aloof. He's not unconcerned. He's not unconcerned, even when we are unconcerned about our own estate, our own walk, our own falling short.
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He's not unconcerned. He's not unjust. He faithfully chastises disciplines, those he calls his own.
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Proves their sonship. So he saw, for instance, God remembering
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Noah. God remembered Abraham.
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God remembered Rachel in the barrenness of her womb. God saw,
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God looked upon Jacob's suffering under Laban's heavy hand. God looked upon the affliction of Leah.
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God heard Hagar weeping when she thought Ishmael was about to perish.
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God heard the cry of Leah who felt no love from her husband and the bitterness of her sister.
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So notice, throughout Genesis, this is who God is presented as. The God who hears.
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The God who remembers. The God who looks. The God who knows.
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But who is this God? And that's Exodus 3. You see, we've been climbing through Genesis to get to this revelation of the
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God that's always been hearing and remembering and looking and knowing his people.
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But we still don't know who he is. What's your name? And that's where we're going in Exodus 3.
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The Lord is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear him.
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What is the desire of those who fear him? He will fulfill the desire of those who fear him.
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They will, yay, they will have three Lexuses in their driveway. What's the what's the desire of those who fear
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God? He hears their cry and he saves them.
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He hears their cry and he saves them. It's what we open the service with. Psalm 145, 18 and 19.
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That's the desire of those who fear God. Hear my cry and save me.
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So let's consider these three verses in application. We see three things.
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First, we see the bondage of sin. Next, we'll see man's response to the bondage of sin.
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And the last will see God's response to the bondage of sin. So first, the bondage of sin.
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The whole plot line of Exodus began with God's people in bondage in the land of Egypt.
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And as we've said, this is all flowing out of Genesis 3. This is a more clear, we've gone from VHS to Blu -ray now.
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We're not quite at 8K, but we're getting there. This is a greater clarity of what redemption is and what it's going to entail.
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A promised deliverer who is bringing his people out of the house of bondage, making them his own, that they may worship him and that they would be constrained by his laws for the witness to the nations.
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All of this is becoming more clear. It was in seed form in Genesis. We're taking a deeper step into the unfolding of the promises of redemption here in the book of Exodus.
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It needs to be said, when we talk about the bondage of sin. This is elemental.
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The rebuke, the constant chastisement against poor Watson from Sherlock Holmes. It's elementary.
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If you just knew the basics, if you knew the elementals and you weren't distracted by all the trappings and the packaging, you would be able to discern these clues or this evidence.
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The bondage of sin is elemental. It's foundational. This is the
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ABCs of Christian faith and Christian truth. And I only say that because it's so easy to assume this and then lose it entirely.
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I'm amazed at the kind of gymnastics that ministries and preachers and publishers and seminarians and writers will do to just avoid talking about sin as sin.
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And so we don't even like using the language of sin. And we certainly don't like talking a lot about sin. We don't like talking about our own sin, depending on where we are in our relationship with the
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Lord. We don't want to hear about sin. But the Bible refuses to let you ignore the reality of sin.
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It's constantly, and Jesus is constantly, drawing our attention to the effects of sin and the danger of sin and the hopelessness of sin's misery and bondage.
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And we cannot understand who Jesus is or why he is king. We cannot understand any of Christian faith or life if we ignore, marginalize, transmogrify, somehow get sin to be something other than what sin is, make sin more palatable or approachable, talk about it as economic circumstances or other worldly structures if we can make it something like an abstract philosophical concept.
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Rather than my crimes and my offenses and my guilt, which are aggravated and amplified because I've known the truth, and I've received the mercy of God, if we fail to speak clearly and forthrightly and consistently about the bondage of sin, we will never be able to understand the first things about the
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Christian life or the Christian hope for the world. So that's the first thing to say.
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We'll circle back to that, but let me say something else about the bondage of sin. The bondage of sin is the plight of fallen man, right?
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They are in bondage to sin. They are slaves to Pharaoh. God desires that they would be slaves to him.
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Let my people go that they may serve me, not serve Pharaoh. That they may pay homage to me, not pay homage to Pharaoh.
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What a different type of slavery it is. To be a slave to Christ is a very different thing than to be a slave to Satan.
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And by the way, if you didn't know, there's no in -between. You are either one or the other. It was some weeks ago we spoke about the chains that are so illusory, right?
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That it's so easy to put them on and you don't know how hard it is to get them off until you try to get them off.
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Sort of like, this is probably, I can't imagine that you could look this up anymore because it's the most un -PC term for a product imaginal, but in my day we called them
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Chinese finger traps. You ever see the Chinese finger traps? I guarantee you they're not called Chinese finger traps anymore. You've seen these and the idea is you put both fingers on either side of the opening, this sort of woven opening, and it's very easy.
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You can go and touch your fingers and it's great. Because it was so easy going in, you think it'll be very easy to pull your hands apart.
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But all of a sudden, that tunnel begins to stretch and close and the more and the harder and the faster you pull, the harder it is.
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That's a great illustration of sin. That's a great illustration of the bondage of sin. It was this easy getting here.
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I know I should enough, but I still have control and I'll have the same control when I want to get out. And it's only when you try to get out, if you ever get to that point, that you realize just how tight those chains of bondage are.
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And I say this because God is not just putting new chains around us and tightening us and instead of being dragged brutally along by Pharaoh, we're now being dragged brutally along by the
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Lord. Is that the picture that Exodus gives us? Is that our own experience as believers? No. God will not
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God will not force his people into submission, but rather make them willing in the day of his power.
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Spurgeon and his great sermon on this text. It's worth reading. You should just go home and read Spurgeon this afternoon. Look up Spurgeon on Exodus 2.
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He says, It's not God's way to make his men slaves, except so far as they willingly yield to him.
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He never violates the human will. Spurgeon's a Calvinist, let's be clear. It's what we say in our confession.
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He doesn't do violence to the will. We're not made robotic. We're not made cyborgs in our relationship with God.
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He works in and around and through our will. He doesn't override it.
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He rather makes us willing. And so, again, It's not God's way to make his men slaves, except so far as they willingly yield to him.
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He never violates the human will, but he constantly, effectively influences it.
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Jehovah wants not slaves to grace his throne, and therefore
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God would not have the people dragged out of Egypt, or driven out in fetters against their own consent, but rather he brings them out in such a way that they're willing to come out, and that they march out with joy and delight, because they had been weary and sick of Egypt, and they rejoice to be freed from it.
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So the question is, in this first point, have you rightly understood the bondage of sin?
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Have you rightly understood the bondage of sin? The Puritans are very helpful and trustworthy guides when it comes to the doctrine of sin.
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In systematic theology, this issue is called Hamartiology, the doctrine of sin.
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And the Puritans spent a lot of time studying it in themselves, in their people, in the world, in the scriptures.
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They studied it because they knew it's elemental, it's basic. And if you're wrong here, you'll be wrong everywhere else.
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Do you rightly understand the bondage of sin? Or do you find ways to package it and conceptualize it, so that it never actually touches you, never touches your life, never touches your mind, your actions, your feelings toward God or toward other people?
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Do you rightly understand the bondage of sin? And then, along with that, you may say, yes, yes, perhaps not as rightly as I should, but I've understood the importance of it, and I've sought to understand it from the word, and there's nothing that I've heard taught on it that I reject or disagree with, and I'm open to hearing more and more about it.
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You say, I rightly am understanding the bondage of sin. Well, have you often understood the bondage of sin?
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The other problem I see, it's not the intentional repackaging or re -approaching of sin, but rather it's just you have the right doctrine, you just never mention it, you never bring it up.
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So you might have the right doctrine, but if it's not out there, and it's not being talked about and thought about and worked out in our lives and in our church, then what good is it?
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What good is it as doctrines that never actually enter our minds or enter our worship? Have we often understood the bondage of sin?
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We need to think about the bondage of sin. If we would avoid the bondage of sin.
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It was so freezing this past weekend, wasn't it? Some of us braved the weather yesterday morning to sit together for a little while, and it was bracing.
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I mean, just in the walk from the driveway to the car, from the car to where we met, you just felt like your hands were gonna turn purple and fall off.
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And it was amazing to me that when I step out into the freezing cold, and then
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I would get into the warmth of the van that had been running for a while, and we got to our destination. By the time we got to the destination, the van was 75 degrees, everything was great.
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And then, of course, we turned it off, met for a little while, and when I went back to the van, even though it hadn't been that long, it was cold.
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And it was this little parable to me of, isn't that just like my heart? Freezing cold toward the things of the
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Lord and to the people of the Lord. But then you force yourself to brave that cold, and you go out, and you're in fellowship, and you pray for a while, and you're talking about things of the
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Word, and the warmth is there, but it doesn't last long when you leave.
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It starts to get pretty cold, and then you forget that it ever was warm. If we don't make a study of the bondage of sin, we are the most vulnerable to the bondage of sin.
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Constantly looking at this issue in our lives, in our homes, in our marriages. So that's the topic, this bondage of sin.
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The question is, how do we respond to it? And then, lastly, how does
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God respond to it? So the second, so the bondage of sin, let's consider now, secondly, man's response to the bondage of sin, right?
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Man's response to the bondage of sin. What did the Israelites do in response to their bondage? Let me ask this.
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What could the Israelites do in response to their bondage? What could they do? Could an
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Israelite groan and cry and just say, you know what? I've been patient,
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I have tried, that's it. Honey, what are you doing? No, no, I have to do this. And he marches up to the taster and he says, hey,
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I'm putting in my two weeks. I've had enough. I quit. You can't quit.
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What would happen, you'd just get beaten. You don't quit. You don't quit. You're ours until you die.
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What could an Israelite do in response to the bondage? All they can do is groan.
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That's all they can do. What can they do in response to the toil and to the suffering?
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What can they do about it? Can they mitigate it? Can they remove it? All they can do is groan.
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All they can do is cry out. All they can do is cry out and up to the Lord to deliver. That's all that they can do in the state of bondage.
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We are born in a world where everyone is in bondage. Speaking of those of the world, not of believers.
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We're born into the world as those who are in bondage, in a world of bondage. But let me point something out.
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We're born in a world where all are in bondage, but not all are groaning. Not all are groaning.
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I'm speaking now to unbelievers. I don't know why Christianity sometimes comes across in this way.
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Because if you actually understand the message of Christianity at all, you could never conceive of it in this way.
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But unbelievers often think, Oh, I'm standing at the fork of the road.
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Here I am, neutral me. If I go this way, I know it will lead to bondage and sin and away from the
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Lord. And if I go this way, it's so much harder and there's so much loss, but I know that this is the only way that I'll find life.
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Alas, here I am, neutral me, objective me, free me, having to make the decision between bondage or freedom, between death or life, between sin or salvation.
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You haven't heard anything about the Gospel if that's your conception of things. You're not standing at a fork in the road.
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You've already embraced sin and death. You're in bondage. The issue is not whether you're going to choose bondage.
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You're in bondage. The issue is, are you going to groan about the bondage? Because you see the effects of the bondage.
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The heaviness, the suffering, the misery. You can't escape it. And so all you can do is groan. We live in a world where all are in bondage, but not everyone is groaning.
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I'm speaking to unbelievers. You can do nothing but groan. You yourself can do nothing but groan.
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And you won't even do that. God makes his servants willing in the day of his power.
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You've made yourself a willing slave to sin. You're willing to bear the toil and the yoke.
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It's easy for now. But let me not just speak to unbelievers.
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Let me speak to believers. God forbid we are willing slaves to sin.
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And so even as believers, we have to ask ourselves the question, Where is the groaning over my sin?
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Where is the groaning over my struggles? Where is the crying out to God because of my failures and the things that so easily cling to me and trip me up in my race to win?
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Where is my groaning over my rejection of the
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Lord's ways, my rejection over the Lord's priorities, my rebellion against God's direct command, my affacement, my affronting to all of God's undeserved mercies?
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Where is my groaning over my state before God? And the question is, again, how are you approaching the means of grace?
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Let me go back to the analogy of the freezing cold. Something else happens. And I know this all too well. When I worked at the plastic factory, you probably heard me bemoan this too much.
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It's at the level where I'm complaining. But I'm trying to make it an illustration. For about four or five of the years that I worked there,
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I had to work during the winter months in two places. The manufacturing plant where these plastic injection machines would throw out immense heat.
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It was like being near molten lava. That's essentially what plastic was, was molten lava.
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And then I'd have to go to an unheated warehouse where we stored and snacked pallets. So I'd have to do this. Sometimes I'd spend two hours maybe loading or unloading trucks in this frozen warehouse, bundled like an
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Eskimo, looking like I was in some Siberian gulag. And I'd get in the box truck and I'd come over to the
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Fijian volcano. And I'm all of a sudden having to kind of... It's like the moment I'm like, oh, warmth.
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Finally, I can feel my fingers again. And before long, it's just like, oh, this is awful. And now you're so uncomfortable and you want to go back to the cold.
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You can experience something like that as a Christian where the means of grace, there's a warmth that you're like, oh, this is good.
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But because you're not taking sin seriously in your life, it becomes off -putting. And now it's a little too warm and it's a little too uncomfortable.
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And you look at those around you, like when I came in yesterday morning from the freezing cold and I'm like sweating, and like, oh, can we open some windows in here?
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And my whole family is comfortable. You look at believers who are well settled and they're comfortable.
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Why are they comfortable? Well, they haven't gone between these extremes of freezing cold to the warmth of the means of grace.
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When you go to these extremes, the warmth becomes uncomfortable and settling you. You kind of want to go back to the cold. But if you've settled and you've fought and you've maintained your walk in such a way that you're not going to these extremes of temperatures, then you're much more comfortable and well settled around the means of grace.
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And so I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised in the least that a believer who's been playing with sin, giving into temptation, who's frozen as far as the
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Lord is concerned, but then he comes into fellowship or he comes out to something and he begins to thaw out,
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I'm not surprised that he thaws out to such a degree that it's very uncomfortable. He says,
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I've had enough. I've had enough gathering with other brothers. I've had enough of prayer time. Their prayers are so sanctimonious and self -righteous,
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I think I'm just more comfortable in the cold. Until the bitterness is so sharp that they want a little bit of warmth, just not too much warmth.
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Do you see what I'm saying? Are you taking the bondage of sin seriously? So what does it actually look like then to be free from the bondage of sin when we all have indwelling sin within us?
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We have sin that indwells us, sin present in our members. What does it look like to actually be free from sin when we know that that freedom is now, truly now, but also not yet?
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That there is the sense that we have been freed from, as the great hymn says, the fountain of blood that's the double cure of sin.
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Freed from what? Freed from its guilt and its power. But there's another sense where we see the guilt of our failures and the power of temptation in our lives all too readily.
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What does it look like to be free and yet still strive? Here's another book recommendation, glorious book.
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Samuel Bolton, Puritan paperback, The True Bounds of Christian Freedom. The True Bounds of Christian Freedom.
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And he describes this, and this is so good. We still have the presence of sin.
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We still have the presence of sin. The stirrings and the workings of corruptions.
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These make us at a time to have many sad hearts and wet eyes. Christ has thus far freed us from sin that it shall not have a dominion.
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So he makes a distinction between the presence of sin and the dominion of sin. The presence of sin, the dominion of sin.
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There may be the turbulence, but not the prevalence of sin. The turbulence, the chaos, the violence, the turmoil of actually struggling with sin, struggling against sin, struggling because you've given in to sin.
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But there will not be the prevailing of that sin. It will not have prevalence in your life. It will not characterize your life.
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It will not have dominion over you. There may be the stirrings of corruption. It was said of Carthage, remember
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Carthage was Rome's mortal enemy in the early centuries of their growth. It was said of Carthage that Rome was more troubled when it was half destroyed than when it was whole.
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That's very good. Rome was more troubled when Carthage was half destroyed on the brink of destruction than when it was whole.
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So a godly man may be more troubled when sin is half conquered than when it reigned. Sin will still work, but it is always checked in its workings.
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They're not so uncontrolled as they were formerly. Sin is now under command. And at times, indeed, it may get an advantage.
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It may even introduce a tyranny in the soul, but it will never be a sovereign tyranny, I say.
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It may get into the throne of the heart and play a tyrant in this or that particular act, but it will never be the king there ever again.
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Its reign is over. You, as a believer, will never yield a voluntary, prolonged obedience to sin.
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So let me pose that to you, as believers. Are you yielding a voluntary, prolonged obedience to sin in your life?
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Let me ask it in a different way. Are you groaning over your sin?
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Are you groaning over your sin? One thing that struck me this week is
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I was looking at the imagery of groaning in the scriptures, which was a lot more scant than I thought, at least the word study for what's behind groan here.
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But in the few places it does appear, it struck me at how broad this groaning really is.
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So the first thing, and just to build this point of are you groaning over sin, 2 Corinthians chapter 5.
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And in verses 2 and verse 4, Paul describes the groaning of a believer.
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So I'm asking the question, are you committing a voluntary, prolonged obedience to sin?
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Or, to follow Exodus 2, are you groaning over sin? Are you submitting to it?
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It annoys you, it frustrates you, it discourages you, it disappoints you, it embarrasses you, it humiliates you, but it's your master nonetheless.
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Are you submitting to that? Or are you groaning to deliver?
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In both cases, you're in bondage to it, but there's a big difference between I love it too much to let it go, or deliver me from this.
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Groaning under it. Look at what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, beginning in verse 2.
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For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven.
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Why is Paul groaning? I don't want this body and all the activity and dwelling sin of this body anymore.
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I want my heavenly body. So I groan. He says we groan. Verse 4. We who are in this tent, this fallen body, we groan being burdened.
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Notice this language from Exodus. Groan, burden. Not because we want to be unclothed.
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We don't want to be less than man, less than human, but further clothed. We want to be truly human.
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After the true image of God and righteousness, that mortality may be swallowed up by life.
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Do you notice what Paul says there twice? We groan. We groan.
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And this is not just for the believers. Paul begins to present this whole chorus of groaning. Romans 8.
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He gives literally a chorus of groaning at almost every level. Romans 8, beginning in verse 22.
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We know the whole creation groans. The whole creation is groaning for redemption.
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Laboring with birth pains together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the
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Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves. Why is the believer eagerly awaiting the redemption of the body?
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As he goes on to say. And notice again, Exodus language. Groaning, burden, redemption.
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This is deliverance from slavery language. This is Exodus language. Why are believers eagerly waiting for the redemption of their bodies?
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Why? Because they're groaning within their bodies. If you are not eagerly waiting, not just waiting passively, eagerly, actively, who will deliver me from this body of death?
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I thank my God through Jesus Christ my Lord. If you're not groaning inwardly, of course you would not be eagerly waiting redemption.
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You're actually stalling for redemption. You're not ready to let go of sin or your idols or all the things that you love.
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Of course you're not waiting eagerly for redemption. You're not groaning. Notice the same thing.
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This is so amazing. So we have the chorus of creation groaning. Believers groaning within themselves.
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And what corresponds to that inward groaning of believers? As Paul goes on to say, this chorus of groaning.
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The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We don't know what we should pray for as we ought.
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A lot like the Israelites. So the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groaning.
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Creation is groaning. Believers groaning. The Spirit within those believers groaning.
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What does that say about God's care for His people?
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Isn't it amazing that Paul says the Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings?
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It never stood out to me before until this week. It doesn't say that the people are here and they're groaning inwardly, eagerly awaiting redemption and the
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Spirit's there reporting, yes, this one's been groaning for the past three weeks. Just make note of that.
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What is the Spirit doing? He is so intimately, actively involved in us.
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He's amplifying and making sensible our groaning. He's not removing the weight of the groan or the pain of the groan.
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Isn't that amazing? It's not some text message describing the groan from a detached observer.
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The Spirit amplifies the groan and translates the pain and the weight of that groan to the throne room of the
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Lord. Why? Because He hears. There's only three positions you will find yourself in this morning.
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Three positions. You are either not groaning or crying out.
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Not groaning or crying out. You are indifferent to everything I've been saying. Talk about a need for a translator.
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I'm Charlie Brown's teacher to you. All of this is in one ear and out the other. You're not groaning.
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You're not crying out. You see no need for it. What burden? What weight? What do you mean
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I'm a slave? Doesn't feel like it? You're all the slaves. I'm free. I do what I want. Yes, you do.
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You willingly do the will of your Father who is the devil, as Jesus would say. So you're in the first three positions.
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First position, not crying out, not groaning. See no need for it. See no opportunity for it.
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It would be manufactured if you even tried. Second position, you are right now groaning and crying out.
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You are this morning, or in this particular time in your life, you are groaning and crying out.
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You see the failure. You see the pain, the misery. You have experienced firsthand the bondage.
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And all you can do is what the Israelites do. While yet undelivered, you groan and you cry out.
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It's all you can do. And God and His providence has brought you to this very place where you see that it's all you can do.
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That's the second position. And the third position is you're groaning and you're crying has been heard.
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You're groaning and you're crying has been heard. You are in either the first, the second, or the third position this morning.
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You are either not groaning, not crying, and you have no care to. You are now actively groaning and crying.
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Or because you have groaned and cried, you know the Lord has heard you and the
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Lord has delivered you. You're either in bondage, not seeking deliverance, in bondage, seeking deliverance, or you're delivered.
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Psalm 28. And I just want to emphasize this from Psalm 28, these three positions. And I want you to see the contrast between verses 2 and verse 6.
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And then the whole psalm ends with an exhortation, with a call. Psalm 28.
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To you I will cry, O Lord, do not be silent to me. For if you are silent to me,
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I become like those who go down to the pit. I can cry, but if you don't hear, if you don't respond, what good is it?
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I'm like everyone else who perishes away. So I'm crying. That's all I can do, but you have to be the one who hears and responds.
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To you I will cry, O Lord, my rock. Do not be silent to me. If you are silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit.
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Hear the voice of my supplication. It's the voice within the cry, the groaning within the groan.
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Hear the voice of my supplication when I cry to you, when I lift my hands up toward your holy sanctionary.
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Where is David in relation to the holy sanctuary? He's not in it.
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He's not in that sanctuary. He's not in that refuge. He's not in that place of safety. Where is he? He's looking up to it.
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He's hoping to be brought into it. When I lift my hands toward your sanctuary, hear me, hear my cry for help.
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Don't take me away with the wicked, with the workers of iniquity, speaking peace to their neighbors, evil in their hearts.
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Like perhaps some of you, even this day, will be tempted to do. When someone who you don't realize is actually a concern for your soul comes up around lunch fellowship and says,
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How are you? And you speak peace to your neighbor, but there's evil in your heart. Give them according to their deeds, according to the wickedness of their endeavors.
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Give them according to the work of their hands. Render what they deserve. They don't regard the works of the
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Lord. They don't look at the operation of his hands. He will destroy them, not build them up. Blessed be the
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Lord. He's heard the voice of my supplication. You've gone from the one who says, hear me, to the one who's been heard within the space of four verses.
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You have an illustration that, as God himself has said, those who cry out to me,
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I will deliver. The Lord is their strength.
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The Lord is my strength, my shield, my heart, trusted in him. And now I'm helped. All in the space from verse 2 to verse 6.
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Therefore my heart greatly rejoices with song. I praise him. The Lord is their strength. He is the saving refuge of his anointed.
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And now it's the exhortation. Save your people. Bless your inheritance. Shepherd them.
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Bear them up forever. Do you see? This is God's response to the bondage of sin.
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In Psalm 28, you essentially have the plight of the Israelite, the plight of you this morning. If you're not in the first position, which at this point in time is a lost cause, everyone in their life is more concerned for their soul than they are.
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It's the worst possible place to be. Worst possible place to be. It means you don't even have a splinter of illumination in your soul.
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Not the haunting of inward grace, of regeneration. It's the worst of all imaginable places.
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And so he cries out. I'm not in the sanctuary, and I know I need to be, and I know I don't deserve it.
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Deliver me. He's groaning. He's crying out. And by verse 6, he's scooped up into it.
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And so then he says, save your people. Save your people. God's response to the bondage of sin.
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In Exodus 2, the cries of the people come up to him, the sighs, the tears, the misery, the pain, the frustration, the discouragement, the depression.
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All of that floods the throne room. And he's prompted to act.
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He's moved to act. Not because the cries have come into his throne room.
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He's not so easily manipulated, the Lord. He sees all things and knows all things.
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He comprehends the ways of man. He's not like us when, if you play the right soundtrack and you show a little puppy that's, you know, injured.
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Like Alicia, when we were first married and we were looking at, you know, shelters to find a cat, and there was this one little kitten.
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I don't know. It was born with some, you know, dysfunction, and it had its two front paws in these little blue casts. And she was like, oh.
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And I'm thinking, this thing looks like it needs eight operations a year. Like, no way. I'm barely going to get a bag of food, you know, monthly.
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I'm not paying for surgery, you know. And she's like, we could call him little Timmy, you know, and he could trot around on his casted paws.
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You know, we're so easy. It's like, oh, of course I would have pity for this situation. God's not manipulated by, you know, some
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ASPCA soundtrack and moving imagery. He sees the hatred, the hostility, the rebellion.
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He sees it all. The filth, the wrath, the envy, the spite, the malice, the ignorance.
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He sees it all. So the sighs and the tears are not changing his disposition toward man.
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Oh, now all of a sudden I feel bad. Now all of a sudden I want to show love. God is not like a man.
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It's not that the cries somehow move God to begin to unfold redemption.
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Those cries are the result of God working out redemption. You see? And so it is in the life of a sinner.
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They're brought to a place, whether they realize it or not, where they cry out to the Lord. Psalm 28, verse 2.
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Please hear my cry. Don't be silent. You have every right to be silent. But you said that if I cry, you'll hear.
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And then by verse 6, he's been saved and he's able to realize it wasn't my cries, it wasn't my tears, it wasn't my groaning that prompted you to act.
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It was because you acted that I cried out in the first place. God, you were working out your love and your plan of salvation in my life before I was even seeking it.
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While I was still an enemy, you saved me. You see,
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God in His mercy is often doing things beyond our experience. And we don't detect His hand.
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We don't see the grace as it unfolds right before us. And in Exodus 2, it may look like He's simply responding to the cries for deliverance when
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He Himself had planted the cries for deliverance so long before. So let me be crystal clear.
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If you are in the first position or you are in the second position this morning, if you are anything less than the resolute psalmist who knows that God has heard him and is here gathering with the joy of God's people and exhorting all of God's people to cry out to Him and receive the salvation
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He so freely offers, if you are not in that position and you are anything less, let me assure you, you can act in nothing.
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You can offer nothing. You can merit nothing.
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You can trade nothing. You can rest in nothing. You can bring about nothing.
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Jesus said, you can do nothing apart from me. All you can do is cry out.
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All you can do is groan, pray.
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God hears because He remembers His covenant. And so you have all these fears about who are you to cry out after this length of time, after this mercy in your life, after the things that you are doing, that you love to do, that you have done.
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Who are you? Who are you to cry out to Him and expect an answer?
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But when God looks on the one who cries out to Him, He does not see just the one who cries out to Him, but He hears the cries of His beloved
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Son on the tree. He hears the pleading, the imploring,
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Father, forgive them. He sees the Lamb's sacrifice to remove the sin of the world.
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He remembers the covenant He made in eternity, the pactum salutis, the covenant of redemption, the new covenant in His blood.
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And He knows that He is well -pleased to receive any who call upon Him for salvation.
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God remembers His covenant, not because of anything we could do, would do, will do, promise to do, resolve to do.
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Not because of anything we've failed to do. Not for anything that we have done, however horrific.
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He doesn't show compassion and send grace because of things that we do or fail to do any more than He has presented the
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Gospel to us for what we've done or failed to do. This is the Gospel that though we break
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His law and have broken His law and neglected Him and insulted His grace, when we groan from conviction of sin and we cry out for salvation, we will receive it.
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The grief of a sinner does not make God a loving God. The love of God makes a sinner grieve.
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This past week at auction, I read this a few days ago, I was so struck by it.
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A penny sold at auction this past week. It was a 1958 Lincoln cent that was manufactured at the mint with a flaw.
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The top letters were doubled and it made it through a few issues before it was caught and corrected and somehow they were still distributed.
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That one cent from 1958 sold at auction for $1 ,136 ,250.
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Not a bad penny. Are you like me, it's just like, okay, take out the quarters and the dimes and you can have that.
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Maybe with inflation we think that way. Well, look at your pennies carefully, please. This rare penny is known as the double die.
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It's the finest example of three known to exist in the United States. The severe doubling of letters and the motto in God we trust and the word liberty on the front of the coin.
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It was owned by Stuart Blay of New York, an avid collector who died in November at the age of 71.
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His set as a total, which included 276 mint conditioned Lincoln pennies dating back to 1909, had a combined value of over $7 .7
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million when their actual value was $2 .76. Now the reason that stood out to me is this.
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In an ocean of pennies who may be justifying themselves,
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I may only be a penny, but at least I'm not flawed like that one. That one's double printed.
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How embarrassing. I'm glad my life's somewhat put together. I have far more hope than they would.
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But God's a lot like Stuart Blay. Out of the ocean of pennies who justify themselves and feel rather comfortable with their lives and their choices compared to the rest,
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God has no desire to pluck them up. Their destiny is the same sewer train as the rest, or to be burnt up and smelted at the last.
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God's like the collector who has only an interest for the one who sees the flaws and does not hide them.
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And because God has his eye on the flaw, he plucks up that coin, and he cares for it.
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And he secures it, and he protects it, and he shields it, and he magnifies it.
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It becomes his boast when all the other fellow collectors, what are you doing with that penny? This is no ordinary penny.
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I've devoted 30 years to this penny. 30 years I've been faithful to care and protect for this little penny, and it's worth unimaginably more than any other penny.
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By his love and care, his eye is on the flawed, it's not on those who think they don't have the flaws.
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They don't care to groan for their flaws. They think somehow that that will be enough for the
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Lord, but the Lord has no interest to see them. He does not see them. He does not hear them. He does not look at them.
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God sees, and God hears. God remembers. God knows the ones who don't hide their flaws.
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And they say, here I am, a penny not even worth to be called a penny. Less than a cent.
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Useless in every way. With no expectation that you would be pleased to pick me. And it's for that very reason that he picks you.
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And it's because he picks you that you're worth infinitely more. Infinitely more.
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We read in Acts chapter 7, Stephen's summary, I've surely seen the oppression of my people.
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I've heard their groaning. I have come down to deliver them. I just want to leave you, as we come to a close,
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I just want to leave you with this imagery. We talked about the chorus of groaning from Romans 8.
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And Stephen, of course, everything in Acts 7 is a very Christ -centered summary of working through the
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Old Testament story of Israel. Stephen is not just summarizing in a shorthanded way the significant events of the patriarchs or the unfolding history of Israel.
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He's doing it with view to God's redemptive acts in a way that corresponds to Jesus being the yes and the amen.
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And so we're meant to see significance in almost everything that he reports and the way that he reports it, including,
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I have heard their groaning and I have come down to deliver.
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I have come down to deliver. Which, for the early Christians worshipping the incarnate
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Lord, have a whole new way of thinking about what it means for God to come down in order to deliver.
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When Jesus is coming toward Bethany, you remember when Lazarus had passed and Jesus knew that that was the case.
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While he was sick, the report came to him and he, for the sake of manifesting the power and glory of God, he chose not to go and to intercede to bring health.
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He rather let Lazarus taste death. And so when he finally does come toward Bethany, before he reaches the town and the tomb of Lazarus, Mary confronts her.
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Of course, Martha was out there first and Martha then sends Mary, the teacher wants to see you, and Mary goes and Mary confronts the
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Lord. And you know the famous speech, Lord, if you had been here, I don't doubt your power, if you had been here you could have saved them, but now it's all far too gone.
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Remember this chorus from Romans 8, all of creation groaning, believers who hate the sin and the effects of sin in their lives and in their relationships, what it does to them in their minds and their will, and they hate it and so they groan inwardly, just like creation is groaning, they're together waiting for redemption and the
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Lord sends His Spirit to amplify those groans and translate those groans to the throne room of God.
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And here also, one of the few other places we have this language. Jesus, this is
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John 11, 33, when Jesus saw her weeping and the
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Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in His Spirit and was troubled. And He said, where have you laid
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Him? Then verse 38, again, groaning in Himself, Jesus came to the tomb and He said, take away the stone.
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I'm speaking to unbelievers who perhaps are groaning or perhaps are not even groaning.
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And here we have in John's Gospel a picture of the Lord Jesus Himself, like the Spirit, Lord Jesus Himself groaning, groaning.
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Far be it from us that Jesus groans for our sins more than we groan for our sins. But Jesus goes to the tomb groaning and I can only imagine in some way
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Jesus stands at the forefront of your heart, of your life, as it were.
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You're as dead as Lazarus, dead in sin and trespass. And you're maybe not even groaning, but Jesus is groaning.
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Jesus is groaning. Though He knows He'll give you life, He's groaning.
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Groaning because of what sin is and what sin does. Groaning because the consequences, the wages of sin is death.
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And so He groans in Himself. But then He commands, take away the stone.
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Wherever you are this morning, I want that to be an image that stays with you of Jesus groaning and yet having all power and grace to say, take away the stone.
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Take away the stony heart, make it a heart of flesh. Take away the stone that this brother is tripping over relentlessly.
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But until you groan like Jesus, until you recognize that like Lazarus, you are dead. Until you yourself are brought to the place that you groan, as Jesus says, if you would believe, you would see the glory of God.
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If you would but believe, you would see the glory of God. Father, be merciful, we pray.
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In our own lives, Lord, as believers, we don't groan as we ought,
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Lord. We're better at hiding our sin and ignoring our sin than we are at confessing our sin and being delivered from our sin.
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Lord, change us by Your Spirit, we pray. Perhaps the
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Spirit is far less active in our consciences, far less powerful in our lives, because He's not able to translate the groans that we're not groaning.
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So help us to groan. Help us to feel the burden, the guilt, the deception of sin, the misery of it,
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Lord. Help us to hate it for what it is, as it is, for what it does. We pray,
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Lord, that this would only magnify Your grace. It would give us a greater love for You, a greater awareness of Your presence, of Your mercy, of just how much
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You love us and how nothing is hid before Your eyes, Lord. I pray that we would see ourselves not hiding the flaws, but with all of the flaws that we have, and yet, never doubting or mistrusting
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Your love for us. Pledged for us in the giving of Your own Son. And I pray if there's one here,
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Lord, that's between Psalm 28 2 and 6, that You would give them greater groaning and greater cries, that You would hear and respond and give them assurance of salvation as quickly as You gave it to the psalmist.
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May they experience today being the day of their salvation, confessing and groaning under the misery of the sin, recognizing there's nothing they can do other than seek
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Your face, cry out for deliverance, and receive the free gift of salvation.
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And if there's those here who are as dead as Lazarus and they don't care to hear, they don't care to listen, they don't care to reflect or apply or engage, they're unprovoked, they're not groaning, seeing
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Lord quickly reveal to them the chains and the misery of their bondage before it's far too late for them to flee from it.