INTRODUCTION
Good morning. How are y'all doing today?

I know I've been back from paternity leave these last couple of weeks, but it feels weird being up here. I'm so thankful to be up here and seeing all of you.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that last time since last time I've been up here, you look really good right now. Not saying that you look bad then. You just look even better. Okay, I'm gonna stop. Okay.

For those of you who don't know don't know me, my name is Nathan Tunison. I'm the associate pastor here at Evident Church. If you're new here, I just want to give a hearty welcome and I'm just so honored that you're deciding to spend this morning with us and so thankful for you that you decided to join us in worship.

Before I begin, the last two weeks we've had a couple of guest speakers help while I was on leave. We weren't sure when the baby was going to show up. My family historically goes like two weeks past the due date and then Josh has some schoolwork to do. Just in case they're watching the service, can we give them a round of applause and just to say thank you?

I said this last service. I'm very thankful that Josh has a million pastors in his family, just in case I have a baby and he finishes a doctorate program. So with that, we are continuing our series through the book of Genesis today.

So if you have your Bible with you, please open it up to Genesis chapter fifteen. If you don't have a Bible, we have Bibles on the back that you're more than welcome to use, and if you don't own a Bible, take that home with you so you have a copy of God's word.

GENESIS RECAP
So just for a little bit of a recap, Genesis is the first book of the Bible. It was written by Moses and it serves as the origin story for humanity. We see that God who is eternal, God who is infinite, He creates the heavens and the earth, and then He populates them with animals and animals of all kinds and then with humans. But we see that humans have a unique relationship with God, that no other creature has in creation. Telling us that humans were created to enjoy their life with God forever and to glorify God in all things forever. However, bad things happened. Adam and Eve sinned and our relationship with God has fell in with that sin.

So after chapter three of Genesis, we're now chasing God's redemptive plan for humanity. God promised a Redeemer, the serpent crusher, to restore the relationship that God intended to have with his people. And we've seen a lot of different characters enter the story who could have been that, right?

We saw Abel, Seth, Enoch, Noah, but none of them were the ones who came from the seed of Eve to fulfill the purposes of God's redemption. And so for the last few weeks, we've been focusing on a man named Abraham. God uniquely chose Abraham to turn into a great nation, right? In chapter twelve, God met and spoke to Abraham, and he said that he's going to make a great nation out of him.

He's going to bless his name and make his name great. He's gonna bless those who bless Abraham and curse those who curse Abraham. And then he also told him that he would give him the promised land, the land of God.

Very exciting stuff. Like if you were Abraham, you would just be thrilled, right? That's the kind of relationship that you want to have with God.

But then chapters thirteen and fourteen happen and since then none of those promises have been fulfilled and it leaves Abraham kind of scratching his head a little bit. So that's where we're gonna be picking up in chapter 15, where we see Abraham, he's just like, God, you made these promises, but I don't see any fruit happening from these promises. So that's where we'll pick up.

So if you're able, please stand with me for the reading of God's holy word.

Hear now the word of God. Chapter fifteen, we're gonna read it in its entirety.

SCRIPTURE READING - GENESIS 15 ESV

After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of the LORD came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

7 And he said to him, “I am the LORD who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” 8 But he said, “O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” 9 He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. 11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. 13 Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. 14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”

OPENING PRAYER

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, I'm just so grateful for this time with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I'm so grateful that they're here today, dedicating themselves to your word, to learn more about you. Holy Spirit, I just ask that you would do a good work in all of our hearts.

Bring us to know you in a greater way, to appreciate you in a greater way. May this word convict our hearts and change us. And if you will, write this word upon our hearts that we may live by it.

In Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated

MESSAGE

I said this last service, but I'm like, I thought I was done with all the names. But apparently not. I think Josh does this on purpose.

Alright. Have you ever signed a contract with someone or like some company, maybe for your car or for your house or anything like that? To be honest, I would pretty much do anything in the world except uh it i if I didn't have to go buy a car.

To me, that is like the worst experience ever. And like it used to be where you could like leave the dealership feeling like good, right? And like, okay, maybe I wasn't just ripped off.

And I used to have this strategy where because there's never just one car dealership. There's like two or maybe three in a row.

So what I would do is go to one of the other dealerships and learn about one of the cars that they're selling there and just get all the specs and then when I'm talking to the dealer, the car salesman, I get very specific. So at the very end, when you feel like you're not getting the deal that you want, I would look at my wife and just be like, you know what, there's that other dealership. There's that blue, Jeep Wrangler sports edition with the upgraded sound system. Maybe we should look at that before we sign anything. And the salesman would be like, Okay, you know what? Let me go talk to my manager. We might be able to work something out, right?

Today it's not like that. Today you're talking to the like the salesman, he's just like, sorry, this is the lowest price. Sorry, like we can we can't budge from this price. But if you want to go to the dealership next to us, there's a blue Jeep Wrangler there. That might be a better fit for you, right?

Anyway, so here we see Abraham cutting a deal with God.

Right? He's entering into this contract with God. God is saying, these are the promises that I have for you if you remain faithful in me.

I'm going to give you this if you give me that. So far in our series we've seen this happen a couple times. The first time's a little tricky, but God enters into a covenant with Adam and Eve. God says, I will provide for you, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil lest you die, right? Which is breaking the covenant. So essentially this covenant was known as the covenant of works. Adam and Eve failed it. They were supposed to listen to the things of God, but they didn't, and they had to face the consequences.

Then there is another covenant with Noah in chapter night, where God promises never again to send a flood upon the whole earth and he gave a sign for this one, which is typical with covenants. The sign was what? The rainbow, right? That God set his rainbow in the skies in the clouds, and when we see it, it's a reminder that he'll never have a worldwide flood and wipeout humanity and earth with it.

So here's one thing to note before we get into like the meat of today's scripture. When it comes to covenants. We have to know that they are signs of God's grace, they're signs of God's mercy and his kindness upon his people. That's the pattern that you find with these covenants that God is making promises with his people out of his loving kindness for them, and then they all point forward to Christ who fulfilled those promises. So when we see covenants, our mind should go to Christ and his works. So that is a theme that you'll see as we study the covenant that Abraham enters into today.

So if you're taking notes, this is my main point. That God's covenant promises illustrates the unique relationship between our faith in Him and His faithfulness toward us. God's covenant promises illustrate the unique relationship between our faith in Him and His faithfulness to us. Church, this should bring us great hope and joy. And I hope that this is illustrated to you in this very chapter.

So we see that Abraham gets this vision from God. And this kind of vision is called a special revelation. So a special revelation is where God specifically comes to a person and he talks to them or he gives them visions or dreams. It's God coming down and speaking uniquely to some person, and it's usually from his chosen mind.

And we see all kinds of visions in the Old Testament, but what's really neat is that they typically reveal God's specific redemptive plan toward people. So in this case, there is a good reason to believe that when these visions happen, this is Christ revealing himself to the people of the old testament.

John Owen he said it like this he said “the revelation of God's will gifted to Christ by the Father commit communicated by Christ through the Holy Spirit to the apostles and others for the benefit of the entire church, taking at its greatest extent is the divine teaching or theology of the gospel.”

So this is where this account gets very, very cool. And this could possibly be speculation, but I think there's good reason to think that when we see this vision of God, we are actually seeing Christ reveal Himself to Abraham. Verse 1 says,

“The word of the Lord came to Abram."

Doesn't that sound very much like John chapter 1?

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God.”

So is it possible that this is an interaction between God and Abraham, that this is Christ presenting himself pre-incarnate? Isn't that interesting to think?

To support this theory, many theologians they use this verse in John 8:56, it says,

“Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was see my day, he saw it and was glad.”

This was Jesus speaking.

So the idea is that in this moment, Abraham was presented through this vision from Christ, the nation that would come from him, and the redemption that would come in Christ to his people. And then in response, that's when he was credited righteousness because of his faith. But regardless, what we can take from this is that God met with Abraham in this special revelation, and Abraham's faith increased because of this vision.

So let's revisit uh these verses. If you're taking notes, here's my first point. We see Abram's illustration of saving faith. Let's read verses one through five one more time.

“After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram, I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. But Abram said, O Lord God, (which can also be translated sovereign God) what will you give me for I continue childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. And Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be the heir. And behold the word of the Lord came to him. This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, Look toward the heaven and number the stars if you're able to number them, then he said to him, So shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

So I want us consider one question with these verses. What did Abram actually do here? Is he coming off as very confident? Really since chapter twelve when Abraham first encountered the Almighty God. Did he respond as this like holy figure and did everything to the T just as God wanted him to? No, not really.

In these verses, he's showing a lot of doubt. He's showing a lot of uncertainty. And verses one through six here, Abraham is wrestling with God's promises. God is promising to make Abraham and his family into this great nation, but what's the problem happening here? Abraham doesn't have any children, right? He's nearing 100 years old. God hasn't blessed him with a son yet. And Abraham's just like, You said I'm gonna be a great nation, but I don't have any offspring. What's happening here?

How would you act in that scenario? What would you think? I'd probably be saying the same thing. I mean, I know I'm having a lot of kids right now, but to have children at a hundred years old is like not happening, right? But let's focus on God's responses.

Is God responding to Abraham in anger? No. Is he like Abram? I know you're hard of hearing right now. You're up like 100 years old, but do you understand what I'm talking about here?

No, he's not saying any of that. God is doubling down. He's saying, Abraham, I chose you. Abraham, I chose your family. I said I'm going to do this. This is what I'm going to do. And then watch what I do next. And in this interaction, in this vision, Abram is in the midst of doubt, in the midst of his concerns, and in the midst of his uncertainty, what happens? Verse 6 - “He believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” Church, you should find comfort in these verses.

Here we're crossed again with what it means to be righteous. Right, we saw this with Noah. Noah didn't do a single thing to be called righteous. Abram didn't do a single thing to be called righteous outside of believing the one true God in a true saving faith.

This man was doubtful. But what's crucial to take away from this is that even in the midst of Abraham's doubt, it didn't change the way he saw God. His doubt wasn't overpowering his faith. We would be good to remember that.

Paul, he wrote about this in Romans 4. He said this in verses nineteen through twenty two.

“He (being Abraham) did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead.”

I love Paul.

“Since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb, no unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith, and he gave glory to God fully Fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”

That is why his faith was counted to him as righteous. His doubts didn't weaken his faith. How many of us here are doubting in God? How many of us here are just not sure w where their life is going. You're like I just can't believe that God asked me here. Are you like Abraham? Are you like, what's going on? What's happening? It's not supposed to be like this.

Church, don't let this change the way you think about God. Do not let this weaken your faith. Instead, hold on to who you know God to be, a God who is full of grace, a God who's full of mercy and patience, a God who has steadfast love for you, a God who covers you with comfort even though you're hurting, a God who is very near to his children and cares for his children. He is there for you. Don't let your faith waver.

Theologian Philip Bethencourt, he put it this way. He said “this should give hope to the believer in Christ who has questions. The Lord does not condemn Abram's questions, nor does he say Abram is no longer righteous for asking them. Take comfort in knowing that in the midst of our doubts, Christ still covers us in his perfect righteousness. That in the moments of your doubts where you're not sure what's going on, you don't become less of a child of God. In those moments, you are still as much his child, even when you're doubting, just don't let your faith in him waver.”

This week I officiated my first funeral for a friend of the family, a very close friend of mine. He lost his 12 year old son. it was expected he had some health issues. And I had the honor of being there the last few hours of his life on Friday and then conduct the funeral service on Monday. And so this week, what I've been doing is I've been checking on and off with this family and just I was asking him a very interesting question, a very important question. And I asked him if I could share the question and his response with you and he said yes. So my question was what has this been like for your faith in God? What has the this done the you know you lost your twelve year old son. What has this done to your faith? And he said it like this. He said, it's been the hardest thing in my entire life. And this man has been through a lot. And it and he said that a part of me is gone. It's missing. He goes, There's days I'm angry. There's days I'm hurt and upset. And then he said this. But I know that God is still good. And ultimately I need to draw closer to Him in this time. That's faith.

It's knowing that no matter what life throws at you, your faith in God isn't going to waver. It means that no matter what storm you are facing, you lean into the grace of God and know that He is with you, and that His ways are greater than your ways, that His thoughts are greater than your thoughts, and then in thick and thin you know it is God who you can find rest in through Christ Jesus.

So next in today's text, we see the institution of the covenant of grace. The institution of the covenant of grace. Let's reread verses seven through sixteen.

This is where things get a little weird.

“And he said to them, to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur from the Chaldeans to give you the land this land to possess. But he said, O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?”

Let’s stop there really quick.

Verse six. He believes the Lord and its credits him in righteousness as righteousness. Two verses later, he's doubting again.

Just note that, right? He says,

“How do I know I shall possess it? He said to him, Bring me a heifer three years old, a male goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. And he brought him all of these and cut them in half, and laid it each half against each other.”

So basically he brought them these sacrifices, they cut them in half, you had one side go like this, another side go like this, and there's a space in the middle between them.

“And when the birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. And as the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.”

What is he talking about here? Egypt, right? Yeah. The Israelites um being slaves of Egypt.

“But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterwards they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in a good old age, and they shall come back here in the fourth generation for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

So if you read these verses and you're like, I have no idea what's going on, I do not blame you whatsoever. Okay? So our modern eyes, when we see something like this and read something like read something like this, our minds goes to like crime scene, right? There's bodies on the ground. This is weird. This is what took place when entering into a covenant.

So the Bible is full of covenants. And a covenant can be uh most easily defined as this: it's an agreement between two or more persons. A covenant is an agreement between two or more persons. So in scripture, most of the covenants we read about are between God and his chosen people. So in this case we see God entering into a covenant with Abraham. So picking backing off the last section, God is making promises to Abraham, right? That He's going to make him into a great nation, that he's going to give him this promised land.

So now in this section, he's saying, I'm going to prove that I'm going to keep my promises with you. And he initiates this covenant to seal those promises he made to Abram. You might be thinking, you know, where do the animals come in? Like, why are they split to in two on the ground? This is very weird, right? This was part of the ritual practice. This is how ancient covenants were made. But today if you go to a car dealership and they're like, Let me go get the animals, we'll seal this deal right now. Run, run. Okay.

So in this case, the carcasses split in half literally mean that Abraham and God were cutting a deal. They were cutting a covenant. This is where we actually get the saying, like, let's cut a deal. Scripture is full of different covenants, but fit into three main categories.

We're gonna go through each one. Let me get the nerd out and I believe me you'll understand what covenants are a little bit better.

So the first one is the covenant of works. So this is the agreement that Adam and Eve made with God. So in the covenant of works, mankind is forced to keep every single word of God and every single commandment. Which means that if you don't do these things, you fall under the curse of the covenant and the curse is a debt. So we are all born into the covenant of works through Adam and Eve. But the very, very sad truth of the covenant of works is that we can't keep it.

So we need a greater covenant to redeem us from the covenant of works. So this is where the covenant of redemption comes in. So in this covenant, this is between the Godhead.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And in this agreement, they are agreeing to create and save a people. Now, some of you might be scratching your heads here like I read my Bible I know it I've never seen the Godhead talking to each other saying I'm going to create and redeem people. But just like Trinity, just like the idea of the Trinity, while the word is not actually used in scripture, the teaching is very clear. That's how the covenant of redemption is. So we see the covenant of redemption by focusing on the life of Christ, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they agreed that the Father would send the Son, who is Christ. The Son would go voluntarily, make his father known, and later, the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit goes willingly. It's this mutual agreement of the Godhead saying that we are going to save humanity out for all those who believe in God and a true saving faith. So it's a mutual agreement of the Godhead saying that humanity is safe.

This is where the covenant of grace comes in. This is the covenant that we're focusing on today. The covenant with God and Abraham. The covenant of grace was created to overshadow the covenant of works. So it's in this covenant that Christ is revealed and made known and glorified. It's in this covenant mankind has hope. It's in this covenant that those who are enslaved to sin who are bound to the world, who are faulty to their flesh, who are entrapped by Satan - It's in this covenant that they can be freed. It's the covenant of grace where mankind is justified by God from their confession of the Son and belief in the great works of God. And we see this illustrated by the faith that Abram had, and the righteousness credited to him.

So it's in this covenant where essentially God has a people whom he foreknew, and he's going to rescue them from their sin, and he's going to do that through Christ. And praise God for that church.

It's called the doctrine of grace because grace is what is needed for the sinner. Our debt of sin is lifted by grace. God sent his son because of his grace for sinners so that their sin would be removed from them.

Great pastor and theologian doctor Martin Lord Jones, he said it like this “It is grace at the beginning and grace at the end. So that when you and I come to lie upon our deathbeds, the one thing that should comfort and help and strengthen us there is the thing that helped us in the very beginning. Not what we have been, not what we have done, but the grace of God and Jesus Christ our Lord. The Christian life starts with grace. It must continue with grace. It ends with grace. Grace, wondrous grace. By the grace of God, I am what I am, yet not I, but the grace of God which is with me.”

Church, praise God for his rich grace. Praise God that he would even consider us to be an agent of such rich grace. It's a gift that we don't deserve. And that's exactly what grace is. It’s a gift that while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. It's the perfect gift. The covenant of grace is essentially the gospel truth: that Christ came to rescue sinners, and it came with such a cost, and it came because of God's rich grace for his children.

I want to focus in on the cost of faith as the last point. What is the cost of faith? Well, let's reread verses seventeen through twenty one.

“When the sun had gone down, and it was dark. Behold a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the pieces. (Remember they're cut in half, there's a part in the middle.) And on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying, To your offspring, I give this land."

So to seal a covenant, the parties must pass through the carcasses. They must both go through it, and this is them saying that I am going to keep the promises that I made, and you're going to keep the promises that you made.

So in a contract, whoever breaks the promises has to pay the penalty. So that's what passing through the carcasses is doing. It's saying, I'm agreeing with you, whoever doesn't do their end of the bargain, they have to fight the curse of the covenant. In this case it's death. Church, in this text did Abraham pass through the carcasses? No. He didn't. He was sleeping. Who passed through the carcasses? It was God. God did. God is saying I'm making promises for both sides of the party. And I'm going to keep the promises for both sides of the party. but it's also saying that if the other side doesn't keep their end of the bargain, Abraham, he didn't pass through. Let the curse fall on me if he doesn't do what he's supposed to do. If the punishment is supposed to come on the people, the punishment will come on me.

So what does that mean? It means that when Abraham and any other believer who comes to God in a genuine saving faith, who falls for the penalty of sin? God does. What does this make you think of? Christ. It's Christ who suffers the curse of death. These verses we're reading about, it's all the work that Christ fulfills. The cost of faith here doesn't fall upon the believer, the cost of faith falls on Christ's shoulders. God enters into a relationship with his people. He makes an agreement. He makes his promises to make him into a great people and into a great nation. He tells them that he's going to be their God and they're going to be his people. Then he says, if they don't keep their ends, let the curse fall on me. They're human. They're sinners. Like Paul said, there's none righteous. No, not one. Of course they're gonna fail this covenant. So I'm gonna send Christ. Christ who is fully man and also fully God. The weight of their sin fell upon his shoulders. He bore that curse. Every last drop of it. How amazing.

Do you see what this means? It means that Abraham entered into a relationship with God not by his works, not by one thing he did, but by faith. And he got to remain in that relationship, not by his works, but by his faith. The gift of faith that doesn't cost a believer anything. And it just illustrates how good and merciful our Father is that He doesn't count on us our faults and our failures, instead of taking away our faith and salvation, which we completely deserve. What did he do? He punished Christ. What love, church, what mercy, what joy to the believer. It should drive us to love him all the more. It should motivate us to serve him all the more. It should lead us to want to obey his word all the more and worship and praise him and be as close to him as physically possible.

I like how Pastor Warren Wearsby how he talked about these verses. He said, “but God alone passed between the parts of the sacrifices. It was God who made promises with Abraham, not Abraham who made promises to God. There were no conditions attached. The covenant of grace came from the generous heart of God.

Church, it's the generous heart of God who saves you today. Are you real willing to receive that? Are you are you sitting here this morning saved by his grace or are you relying on your own works? If you're here today and you're not sure or you don't have faith, let me just be very, very clear to you that your works are not going to save you. There's no hope in your works. Christ can save you. His works can save you.

Paul wrote about it. Galatians 3, he's talking about this very scene in Genesis.

Paul wrote,

“For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse. (Notice that that word, it's covenant language) For it is written, Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all By all the things written in the book of the law and do them. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith. But the law is not of faith. Rather, the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeem us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree, so that in Christ the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”

Notice again it's just reassuring it's Christ who fulfills the covenant curse so that we may be in a relationship with God. So if you're here and you're not sure if you're saved by Christ, please just know this: the righteous live by faith. Christ redeemed the sins of all those who live by the law. This means your works or your or your lack of works are covered by the blood of Christ. He died to rescue the ungodly. So if you confess Jesus as Lord and as a Savior who rescues you from your sins, and you believe with all your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. I truly, I pray today that you can find that kind of rest, that you can find that kind of joy in Christ alone, because the world can't offer you eternity with Christ. It can only offer you just a small sliver. It can't offer you the richness and the vastness of God.

Please I beg with to you today, find rest, joy, and comfort in Christ alone. I want to close with a quote from uh pastor theologian JV Fesco. It's very simple, but it's very profound. “The blessings of Christ's completed work come only to those who believe in him by grace alone, through faith alone.”

Church, know Christ and seek Christ with all your heart. Let's pray.

CLOSING PRAYER

Heavenly Father, we just thank you for your wonderful works. We thank you that you have such a heart for your children, that you're willing to go to the lengths of sending your son to be the curse for your children. That by our beliefs and in our faith we are saved by Christ.

Thank you for being so loving. Thank you for being so merciful. Thank you for considering us when you give out grace. Thank you for considering your children. And Lord, as we enter into a time of communion, I just pray that you would be with us.

Help us to remember the saving works of Christ. Help us to remember you continue to work through your children. Help us to remember that you're not far, but you're very near to us and that you're loving us and protecting us and you're being patient with our sin and you're sanctifying us in Christ. What a hope we have in Jesus. Amen.