Numbers 15:29-36 | Outright Defiance | Alex Culpepper

If you're new or visiting with us, our pattern on Sunday mornings is that we open the word of God together. And so if you don't have a Bible with you or you don't really aren't able to carry one around, we did. In the bulletin that you received this morning, we printed out the passage that we're gonna be working through. So if you want to follow along with us, we would really encourage you to do that. Just so that, number one, I mean, it's great accountability for me so that you can make sure that I'm just not, like, making these words up.

Right. That they're coming from. From someplace. Right. But also, it's a great way for you to just be able to engage with us as we go along together.

So I want to ask you, have you ever encountered a rule that other people take really seriously, but you kind of just don't get it? You don't get what that rule is about. You don't get why they do things like that? So I'll tell you one. When I was a kid, my parents were driving the car, and I had dropped something on the floor.

And so I turned the dome light on so that I could get the thing that was on the floor. And my parents told me, no, don't do that. And I was like, but I have to find the thing. They're like, no, don't do that. And so, you know, just being the curious child that I was, I asked why, and.

And I don't know if they know this or not, but they told me something that was not true. They said, well, the cops will pull us over if the dome light is on, guys. I believed that until, like, four years ago. I thought for sure that we would get pulled over if the dome light was on another one. That I know that people.

That. It's really important to people. I don't totally understand. Is that the idea, like, you can't. You shouldn't wear hats inside a building.

Or in particular, like, you shouldn't wear hat. Like a hat in church. I'm not telling you if you're wearing a hat. I don't see any. That's great.

I'm not telling you to do that. I'm just saying that there are some people who have this rule, and I don't totally understand it. I know that it is a sign of respect, but I can't tell you why it's a sign of respect. I just know that it's a sign of respect in some circumstances. Dining etiquette.

I don't like, why can't you put your elbows on the table? Right? Like, I'm relaxed. I'm having a great time here, right? I just want to be able to, like, set my elbow down and look at you with some intent and be comfortable where I'm at, right?

And then, you know, this one I do understand. There's, like, there's flag etiquette, right? There's ways that we handle the flag of the United States of America in our country, right? We don't let it touch the ground, right? That's something that's very important, right?

We don't let anybody walk on it or trample on it. Those are all kind of rules. Each of these I described are rules that we follow that you may or may not understand the context for. But the point is that actually, every rule does have a context, right? If you don't get the context, that rule won't make sense.

But once you understand the context, you learn why it was so important, at least at one point, and maybe why it is still important. I point this out because I have a particularly difficult task in front of me this morning. My goal this morning is to get you to agree with God that at the time and place that he acted, that it was right and good for a person who gathered firewood on the Sabbath to be killed immediately for that act. Because initially when I was preparing for this, I was like, oh, man, that's pretty harsh. That's pretty intense.

Like, after all, we did just read these words in Numbers, chapter 14, verse 18. It says, the Lor is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, right? This is key to his character and who he is. But then once I started digging into this, I figured out, okay, there's some context here that makes a lot of sense as to why God acted in this way. And so I started to grasp that.

My hope is that by the end of our time, you. You will start to grasp that with me as well. So today we are continuing a series called Wanderings and Warnings. We're walking through the Book of Numbers and a little bit of the Book of Deuteronomy and looking at various stories of the Israelites as they were wandering through the wilderness. And these stories are recorded in such a way that they not just tell us the history of Israel, but they're also teaching us larger lessons as well, not only about who God is, but about what is human nature, like, what is our tendency.

And so we observe different facets of the ways that human hearts can be given over to self and to deception above all else. So that we're doing this right, we're pulling all of this up so that we can, number one, be in awe of the love of Jesus to actually die for that sin, right? That we can, number two, identify for ourselves how sin is at work in our own hearts. And so, number three, that we can actually repent and make more space for the Holy Spirit to conform us into the image of Jesus. And so today causes us to deal with kind of the gravity of what it means to reject the Lord who is gracious and compassionate.

And so numbers 15, you can go to verse 32. Actually, we're going to be in 29. So numbers 15, 29 is where we're going to start. So just so you know, we didn't do the beginning of the Book of Numbers or, sorry, the chapter 15 of numbers, because these first many verses are like a reiteration of, of Old Testament law, specifically their laws related to life for God's people in the promised land, right? There are laws that are given to God's people for how they will behave when they're in the promised land.

What are you going to do when you get into that land? And this set of laws was reiterated in the beginning of numbers 15 to kind of create a very direct contrast between the two stories that, that are on either side. Like, the law exists there to tell us, oh, hey, you remember how the people didn't get into the land, Right? Well, here are some laws for them to follow when they do get into the land. And then there's a story right after it that again shows the tendency in the people to not follow the law that God has given them, right?

So they missed out on this opportunity to take the land. But Yahweh, the one who calls himself I am. That's what the word Yahweh means in Hebrew. Yahweh is still talking of a future in which the people of Israel will get the land, like the people he calls his own will get the land. Even if this current generation doesn't get the land, there's still a future for this people.

And so the very end of these laws set the context for the story that we're about to look at, verse 29. So this is at the end of this set of laws, it says, you shall have one law for him who does anything unintentionally. So that word unintentionally, it's speaking of sins committed without awareness that you're sinning right? Sinning in a way that you didn't realize was sin. So just so you know, the Levitical law, the book of Leviticus gives to us the Levitical law, right?

But it's designating kind of a lot of different kinds of categories of sin, right? You have sins of omission, sins that you omit, meaning there are things that God told you to do that you did not do, right? And then you have sins of commission, which are things that you did that God has told you not to do, right? So. So the Levitical law told sets up both of those categories.

It also sets up degrees of sin, right? There are various kinds of offerings for various degrees of sin. There's a sin that you can do against your neighbor, there's sin that you can do against God, right? It gives us those kind of categories. And so one of the ways that the Levitical law categorizes sin is on this spectrum of intentional sin and unintentional sin, right?

And so if you move from unintentional sin to intentional sin, kind of the most extreme degree of intentional sin that you can have is something called sin with a high hand. Sin with a high hand. Now, we're gonna look at that in just a second. But I just want to kind of give us a quick note because we're talking a lot about Old Testament law, and I want to create some understanding for us. So just the Bible, just so that, you know, if you're new to the Bible, the Bible is divided into two parts called testaments.

You have an Old Testament and you have a New Testament. The Old Testament tells us about the time before Jesus. The New Testament tells us the story of Jesus and what it means that he has now come. And so right now, we're reading in the Old Testament, the Book of Numbers. And it gives us Old Testament law, which is a part of something called the Old Covenant.

But we are New Testament, New Covenant Christians who don't follow Old Testament Old Covenant Law. Because Jesus sacrifice on the cross, right? His blood shed for us is the thing that now mediates our relationship with God. It used to be by the keeping of laws and by the doing of sacrifices, your relationship with God would be mediated. But now our relationship is mediated by the blood of Jesus, by the forgiveness of Jesus.

But obedience to God has always been by faith, right? So obedience has always been by faith. It's just that obedience looks different now than it looks now than it looked then. And the reason for that is in the New Covenant, instead of looking at a set of laws that is external to us. And following those laws, the blood of Jesus cleanses us and makes space for the Holy Spirit to live inside of us.

And the Holy Spirit then writes the law of God on our heart. And so now we follow God from a heart of desiring to follow Him. We follow him from the heart because he has given us a new heart. So the Old Testament is still really valuable for us because it shows us a lot about God's character and his history of working in the world. The Old Testament law in the stories, they reveal to us broad principles about who God is.

And so this is the value of looking at the Old Testament even if we don't follow every single rule in the way that is listed in these books. And so with that being said, numbers 15, 30. But the person who does anything with a high hand, remember, a high hand is the most extreme degree of intentional sin that you can have. So high handed sin is the kind of sin that you commit to put God in his place, right? To show God who's boss.

It's a kind of, it's kind of like a deliberate opposition to God's command, right? So it's not just like disobedience, it's not just giving in to temptation. It is deliberately putting your fist in God's face and shaking your fist in his face as a means of saying, you know what, I don't really like God, I don't want what he wants, so I'm going to show him what I really think of Him. That is what sin with a high hand is. And so the person who does anything with a high hand, that person shall be cut off from among his people because he has despised the word of the Lord, and so his iniquity shall be on him.

So this is the most serious kind of offense that you can commit. In Hebrew Israelite law, the response to it is that you should be cut off. Now you might ask, well, what does it mean to be cut off? That's a great question. To be cut off would mean that you and all of your descendants would be removed from the blessing of being called one of God's people.

Now this could happen in several different ways. In some cases it might mean the loss of your property, right, that you no longer have a place in the land that God calls His land. In some cases it might mean banishment or exile. So now you're sent out of the land, you can no longer live here. You have to go be a part of a different people.

And in some cases, in fact, most frequently it means the death penalty, right? Meaning that you, like, you're literally cut off from being a part of the living and all of your descendants with you. And so it has religious implications to it, too, because what that means is that if you're being cut off from the people that God calls his own, then God is saying, you are no longer my own, right? You no longer belong to me. You're no longer a part of my people.

And so after this law is given, we get a story that reveals a bit of the purpose of this law or how to implement it. It's like case law. So whenever Congress in our country, whenever Congress makes a law, that law goes into effect. But then that law gets worked through the courts in various ways so that the courts can help us determine how that law gets applied. Right?

That's what's happening here with this story that we're about to read. This is showing us the application of what to do when you encounter somebody who sins with a high hand. So we get this story, and it's going to explain this. So this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to read the story for us.

I'm going to pray, and then we'll begin to walk through the story. So would you stand with me for the reading? God's Word.

This is God's word from numbers 1532-36. While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation. They put him in custody because it had not been made clear what should be done to him.

And the Lord said to Moses, the man shall be put to death, and all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp. And all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, as the Lord commanded. Moses, would you pray with me? Father? Would you by your Holy Spirit, teach us your character?

Would you teach us your heart? God, I pray against the spirit of Unbelief, a spirit of resistance to you. God, I pray if there is any spirit of opposition to you, that by your power and your authority, that you would silence that spirit and that you would make us receptive to your character this morning, Holy Spirit, so that we could be instructed. And not only that we could be instructed, Lord, but that we could come to love and value who you are, even when it doesn't align with what our hearts tell us is good and right. God, would you teach us?

This morning we ask this in Jesus name, Amen. Amen. You can be seated.

Numbers 15:32. When the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. So this is that thing where we read it and go, okay, well this guy, like, he's just taking care of his business, right? He's just out. I mean, he's just getting sticks for a fire.

Like, what's the big deal about this? This doesn't. This is where we go, I don't get it. Like, what's the context? What's going on?

And this is why the context is really important. Because if we get the context, it will help us to understand what the big deal is. So the question that we need to answer is, what was the Sabbath day? So the first thing that the Sabbath day was, it was the seventh day of the week. In fact, the word Sabbath and the word seven in Hebrew, they're related to each other by the same root word.

In Hebrew language and culture, the number seven is incredibly important. It's significant. It tells you so much about God, in fact. So the number seven and the word rest in Hebrew, because that's what Sabbath means. 7 and Sabbath also means rest.

And so the concept of rest is worked in to how they count. Meaning every time that they count, every time that they write down numbers, every time that they interact with numbers, when they come to the number seven, they are reminded of rest. And then of course, every time that they rest or they think of the concept of rest, they're reminded of the number seven. And in fact, if you were to read Exodus chapter 20, verse 10, where it tells you it's the command to, to do the Sabbath day, to honor the Sabbath day, it's literally on the seventh day you shall rest. Or it's Yom.

His, like that. Shabbat, Shabbat. Shabbat, Shabbat, Shabbat, Shabbat. So these two words are so closely linked that they say them and it's like you're saying the same word. And so it's a bit of a chicken or the egg question.

Which one came first? I don't really know, but. But it's so core to their culture that they are formed and informed about who God is every time that they count. Number two, the Sabbath day was the day that belonged to God. It was God's day.

So remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. That word holy means that it's set apart from every other kind of day. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. Every seventh day there needs to be one day of rest.

And on this day, what you do is you literally rest to Yahweh. You, you perform a rest to God. Like for God, it's a rest that is given over to him. The I am to your God. This is a rhythm of worship and attention, placing our focus on God as we rest.

Number three. It is the gracious day of rest. So God gave this day as a gift to the Israelites. Deuteronomy 5:15 reveals a little bit about this. God says, you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.

When you were a slave, you worked relentlessly. You never had a day off. The Egyptians forced you to work time and time and time again. They made your labor very difficult. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.

And the Lord your God brought you out. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the rest day, to keep the Sabbath day. The Lord gave this gift to you because of the oppression that was done to you in Egypt. Verse 4 or sorry number 4. The Sabbath day is the unique revelation of God's identity.

So Exodus 20, verse 11 it says, in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. But he rested on the seventh day. Quick question. Did God need to take a rest? No.

But he chose to rest on the seventh day after six days of creating. He made a day called the Sabbath simply for resting, even though he didn't need to. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. So every other, for every other nation that existed, every other people group that existed, they all have calendar rhythms. And they get their calendar rhythms by looking up at the sky, looking what happens to the sun, looking what happens to the moon, looking at what happens to the stars, right?

So you're able to look and find day and night, and day and night. Mark how long your days are, right? And then you're able to look at the moon. And the moon is able to inform the length of your months, how long your months last. Weather marks the seasons, right?

You can tell the difference from one season to the next. And then of course, the sun is. By the position of where the sun is in the sky, you're able to mark what your years are. But this rhythm, this weekly seven day rhythm, you could only know this rhythm if you followed God's word. The only way that you could know this rhythm is if you listened to the instruction of Yahweh.

Right. So all the other nations, they would look at Israel and they would watch this very strange people take one day off from their work every week. Every seven days, they would watch these people rest. And at the end of the month, after the moon had gone through its phases, they get to the end of the month, Israel will have produced as much, if not more, than all of those other nations, even though one day, every seven days, they took a day of rest. And so those other nations would get to come understand something about the provisional nature and character of the God who loved Israel.

He would get. They would get to understand something about what it means that God is a God who wants us to delight in and rest in Him. The other nations would understand something about the character of God. And then finally, number five. The Sabbath day was a sign of mutual love and commitment.

So the Sabbath command comes from the Mosaic covenant, right? The covenant that Moses got from God that he gave to the people in a covenant. Just so you know what a covenant is, It's a relationship, agreement between two parties. So the Mosaic covenant, it's the Ten Commandments, and the agreement is between God and Israel. God says, hey, do these and I will bless you in the land that I'm going to give to you.

And so the existence of a covenant between God and Israel means that God loved these people, that he wanted relationship with these people, that he treasured them as his people. They were his special possession. So this is not the only time that God makes a covenant. In Scripture, God makes a covenant several other times. But every time that God makes a covenant, he always attaches a sign to that covenant, something that marks that covenant.

So God's covenant with Adam, he says, be fruitful and multiply. Babies are a sign of the covenant that God made with Adam. God's covenant with Noah. He said, hey, no longer am I going to judge the world with a flood like I have judged it. And then he put a rainbow in the sky to say, this is the sign.

Every time this rainbow is repeated, you're going to be reminded that no longer will I judge the world in this way. The rainbow became that sign. That was a mark of that covenant. God's covenant with Abraham. God made a covenant.

He said, hey, you're my special people. And circumcision became the sign that they performed to mark God's covenant with Abraham and then God's covenant with Moses. The Sabbath was the sign of God's covenant with Moses. Them practicing this week after week after week would be the identifying mark that says, we are in relationship with our God. We could think of it like this.

The Sabbath is like the wedding ring binding the relationship between God and Israel. That's what it is. That's how it functions. So every Sabbath is a repeated, intentional re. Reminder, saying, hey, God loves you.

He's committed himself to you. He's saved you. He's called you blessed. He's made promises to you. He wants you to know him.

He's made a way for you to have relationship with him. And so if you're an Israelite, one of God's people, you must keep the Sabbath if you choose to neglect it. And we read this in other places in the book of Exodus, if you choose to neglect this sign, it says clearly the punishment is death. God already made that clear to his people when he gave the command about the Sabbath. Now, if you break the Sabbath on accident, right?

Imagine like, that you made some mistake or you didn't know that something was work, right? There actually is a pathway in the law to forgiveness for. But if you break it on purpose, the punishment is death.

And so Numbers 15:32. While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. Now, the details of this story display to us that this man did not break the Sabbath on accident. He did not wake up on the Sabbath day and go, oops, I forgot. That's not what happened.

This is a premeditated rebellion against God. He is shaking his fist at God with a high hand. So the day before, what would have happened the day before, before he goes out and starts gathering his six. Do you know what would have been happening the day before? The day before, he would have been in his campsite, and he would have watched all of his friends and all of his neighbors go out, and they would start gathering their sticks for the Sabbath, and they would start gathering their extra manna on the Sabbath.

Because on the day before the Sabbath, you do extra work to prepare for the day so that you don't have to do work on the Sabbath day, right? It's not like double the work, right? But you do some things to pre. When you go through kind of your normal flow of taking care of yourself, that you don't have to go out and do work to do that. And so he watched all of the people around him on, let's say, Friday, go and collect sticks and collect their manna and take care of their stuff.

Now that, I mean, it's worth saying these people do not have a lot to do. Like, this guy is not getting distracted by Anything. It's not like there's like, oh, you know, like, they basically have one job. Like, you carry your stuff through the desert, right? And you go get your stuff early on Friday, right?

Like, that's pretty much what they do. And they follow God wherever God goes, right? And they take care of their kids. It's not like there's a lot going on. And yet this guy sat and watched all of the other people prepare for the Sabbath.

But on this day, he says, you know what? I'm gonna go and do my own thing. So this guy has decided that he does not like God. Now, maybe it's that God didn't let them into the land. Maybe it's something else.

Maybe while everyone else is resting, he just, you know, decides that he very willfully and very publicly is going to go out for everyone to watch him show God what he thinks. So what's happening now is that all of the people who followed the law are watching this one guy who did not follow the law, and they watch him go out and they watch him make a mockery of the thing that God has said. This commits you to me. This is our sign of commitment to each other, right? So this guy has been under the protection of God as they've gone through the desert.

This guy has been under the provision of God as they've received the manna every day. This guy is one of the people that God has said, you are my treasured possession. I love you. He's receiving the benefits of being God's people. And this guy decided he would spit in God's face and trample the wedding ring in the dirt.

That's what he did.

So verse 33. Those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation, they put him in custody because it had not been made clear what they should do to him. So there are some people in the camp who recognize the gravity of what this means, what this guy has done. They see that this guy is testing God's patience. And they've already been testing God's patience, right?

God has been very patient with them. They know this, and they see this guy do this, and they are very concerned. And so they arrest him, right? They take him into custody and they take him to Moses and Aaron. And that whole thing about it had not been made clear was this, that this guy knew what he was doing, the people knew what he was doing.

And the people knew that judgment should be rendered, but they didn't know what it should look like. And that's why they bring him to Moses and Aaron. They essentially are performing like a citizen's arrest. And so Moses and Aaron and the elders, they're going to have to render some kind of judgment. And the Lord speaks up in the midst of this.

The Lord said to Moses, this man shall be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp. So Yahweh, the I am the one who has called this people his own says, literally, shall be put to death. He's saying, this man must die. That's the only right and proper response to this situation, right?

The Lord, gracious and compassionate, but he is also holy and just. So if you look at numbers 14, 18, the Lord is slow to anger and compassionate, abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation. You know, it is a really dangerous game to say, you know what? God has been so patient with me.

Why don't I just test his patience again?

It's a really dangerous game to say, you know, if God is really loving, then he would never render judgment on me. If God is really loving, he would never condemn me. Look at all the people that he's forgiven, right? Like, I don't want his way. I want my way.

And you know what? He could probably forgive me for that. And what this shows us, this aspect of God's character, this story, what it shows us, and this is our main point this morning, reject God and eventually he'll grant your desire, right? Like he's not beyond giving us what we ask for.

This God, this guy, when he performed this act, essentially said to God, it'd be better for me if I wasn't a part of your people. I don't like being a part of this people. And so God gave him what he's asking for. So God must judge sin, and the wages of sin is always death. And if you are going to be bold enough to reject God's love and identity and grace and salvation and authority, he will be patient with you, but he will only be patient to a point before he gives you exactly what you've been asking for.

So verse 36, all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, as the Lord commanded Moses. So all of the people now participate in the rendering of this judgment against this man. They all have the experience of. Of seeing and enacting this judgment. And then as they partake in this.

They think, oh, so that's what I could suffer if I reject God in the same way. So this is why, by the way, this is why breaking the Sabbath and blasphemy are so closely related to each other. So if you think back on the stories of Jesus and if you haven't heard them, one of the things that happen frequently, frequently with Jesus is that he was accused by the religious leaders most often of two for breaking the Sabbath and for blasphemy. And the relationship of those two things is very close together. Because the religious leaders had the intent to find a way to show that Jesus was not actually a part of God's people, but that he was in blatant rebellion against God.

That's what they were trying to do. Because if you broke the Sabbath or if you blasphemed, this was the way that you were saying, yeah, I'd be better off if I wasn't a part of God's people. And so those things display high handed rejection of God and what he wants among the people of Israel. So we don't follow the Sabbath. We'll talk about that in a second.

I'll talk about what that means in a second. But so what? So what? Number one, there is one unforgivable sin Jesus talks about, only one. There's one sin which you cannot be forgiven for.

To commit this sin is to seal your condemnation with God. It is called this. It's called the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Now what does that mean? Because everybody always asks, oh no, have I committed the sin of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit?

Let me just tell you. If you're worried that you've committed the sin of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, I promise you haven't committed the sin of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Because that's not how it works. This is what it means to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit. So just like Sabbath was the seal or the sign of the old covenant, the Holy Spirit is given to us as the seal and the sign of the new covenant.

The Holy Spirit is God Himself speaking to our heart, being desirous to bring us into relationship with the living God, that we could truly have a relationship with our Creator because He loves us, because he wants to save us from our willful rejection of Him. That's who the Holy Spirit is. And to blaspheme the Holy Spirit is to resist his work as he brings conviction of sin and reveals the need for repentance and faith in Jesus. So to commit the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is to die having never submitted your life to Jesus because the Holy Spirit testifies to our hearts who Jesus is.

So what does this mean?

John chapter three actually gives us a unique commentary on this whole reality. And I want to look at it for us this morning. John, chapter 3, verse 16 says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. It says God gave, so God sent Jesus. Jesus went to the cross.

He suffered great torment and great punishment and died for us. Isaiah 53, verse 8 says that Jesus allowed himself to be cut off from the land of the living for us. He suffered the punishment for high handed sin. That's what Jesus did for our sake. So God so loved us that he sent Jesus to suffer the punishment for high handed sin for us.

Because that's how great his love is. And he wants us to find a way into eternal life. That's why he sent Jesus Christ. So verse 17 says, For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, right? Jesus did not come to issue a statement of our condemnation, but in order that the world might somehow in some possible way be saved through Him, Jesus was sent to give us a way out.

A way out of what? Verse 18. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already. What this is saying is that the natural statement of humanity is that we are enemies of God, we are in opposition to God, we are separated from God, we are resisting God. That is who we are in our nature.

And if we stay in that place, then we stay in the same place that every human being who has been resisting God already has been. We're all condemned. That's where we all start.

Because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. There is one way out of that condemnation and it is to believe in Jesus. So I would plead with you this morning. If you have not surrendered your life to Jesus, you don't spend any longer presuming on God's patience like, don't, don't. If there are questions that you need to ask, I want to encourage you ask those questions.

If there are issues that you need to process, process those things. But please don't keep ignoring him. Do not ignore him. Because as long as you do, you remain as one who stands opposed to Him. And everyone who stands opposed to him is condemned to an eternity in hell, an eternity of anguish.

And eternity, where God will let you get what you have been looking for.

And so the Bible gives us two options. We can turn to Jesus in faith so that his death becomes the payment for your sins, or you can reject him and pay for your sins yourself. And so you may be here this morning and you may have heard me say all that, and you're like, okay, but I believe in Jesus. And I just want to let you know, like this. The purpose of this is not just to make you feel safe or secure, although I want you to feel safe and secure if you're believing in Jesus.

But the purpose of this is also to give us a concern for the eternal state of our friends and neighbors, because they are in that category called condemned already if they don't believe in Jesus. And would we take seriously the state that they're in, the circumstances that they are, because they are in a place that is opposed to God. So what? Number two, when you live for Jesus, you honor the Sabbath. You're like, what?

All right, so, so guess what? The Sabbath is Saturday. And we're here on a Sunday, right? We all, like, worship on a Sunday. Some of you work some Sundays, right?

And so you may be going, oh no, are we in trouble? Like, what's. Like, what's going to happen here? And I just want to tell you, not at all, right? Like, there are places in the New Testament where God says, let no one pass judgment on you in regards to a Sabbath.

Hebrews chapter four talks about the Sabbath. And the whole point of Hebrews chapter four, we're not going to break it out right now. It's really complicated. But the whole point of Hebrews chapter four is that the Sabbath was about more than simply a day, right? That the idea in Sabbath of resting, of a day of peace with God, it was a shadow of something that for centuries was always meant to point to and glorify Jesus, right?

Jesus is the one who binds us to God. Jesus is the one who has earned us a place with God that we could not earn on our own. Jesus is the one who with the holy, with the Father, sent the Holy Spirit to live in us. Jesus is our conquering and soon coming King. Jesus is the.

The one who has loved us better than anyone has loved us. Jesus is the one who gives us peace with God. Jesus is the shepherd who brings us to green pastures so that we can rest. Jesus is the one who comforts us in the valley of the shadow of death. And Jesus is our Sabbath.

He is our rest with God. We were at odds with God. At one time, we were enemies with God, but. But now we have been brought near by the blood of his cross. He has brought us near to God so that we can have peace and rest.

And so every time we worship and glorify and obey and honor Jesus, we honor that covenant. We honor our Father, we honor the Sabbath. And so we're going to do that here this morning as we transition to communion.