The Promise of God

Thanks very much for that, Claire. That was beautiful. I don't know if you, uh, it was hopefully less nerve-wracking than being up in front of a group of so many people, although we were all staring at you while you were playing. You did a great job. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen now, and we'll get started with the sermon. I hope everyone had a good week. It seemed that these weeks, um, sort of tend to blend into each other, at least for me, probably for everyone else as well, since many of us are at home most of the time now. This, I guess I would call the week of the mask. Karen made a few face masks for us, but before she was done making those, I made a trip out to Target. I forget it was Wednesday evening or Tuesday evening. Must have been before the Holy Day, so probably on Monday or Tuesday. And I went there and I had, didn't have a mask, so I brought along an old neck gator from skiing, and so I kind of pulled it up over my nose and face. I was walking through the store. I felt really self-conscious walking into the store, wondering if people were thinking I was there to hold the place up or something. But the way it is nowadays, we see people with all kinds of different face protection. I guess it's a good thing and not a bad thing. So, pleasure to come to you here from my office at home. It seems like I spent a lot of my days sitting right here staring at my screen, but glad to spend the time with everyone here for services today. It's been great seeing everybody get used to using Zoom. Seems like we get a little bit better at it every week and figure out a few more features. Hopefully the music and the video came through a whole lot better today than it did in the last few weeks. And if anyone's noticing any other difficulties, please let one of us know. And we're doing everything we can to keep making this as good an experience as we can for everybody.

So, we sit here at an interesting time. We're just past the Passover on Days of Unleavened Bread and on our way to Passover. I thought it'd be a great time just to sit back as a start to this message and reflect on where we are, not just in the chronology of the year, but also in the chronology of God's Holy Day plan. I've talked about this a little bit with some of you and in a message going back a little ways, but when we think about God's Holy Day plan, it really is a perfect story.

If you take a class on writing a story or screenwriting or something, they'll tell you that a perfect story has a past, a present, and a future. And that's exactly the story that God's given to us. And as you see here in the short summary that I put together, when we look at the Holy Days, we do see things that happen in the past, which is Passover, in the days of unleavened bread through which we can live a sinless life before God.

It's only as we reflect on during the days of unleavened bread through Jesus' sacrifice and that forgiveness that we can be spotless and sinless for him. When we think about where we are in human history, that's something that happened a couple thousand years ago. But in present, we're living really in the age of Pentecost. We're living at the time when God's Holy Spirit has come. And unlike the majority of the people that wrote the books of the Bible, most of them did not live in that age of Pentecost, not in the time that the Holy Spirit came.

They only knew it as a future promise, something that was going to come. But we're given that opportunity to live in the reality of this world where we can have Jesus Christ dwelling in us through the Holy Spirit, something only a small fraction of human beings, especially if we look back to Old Testament times, we're able to do. And of course, we look forward to those fall Holy Days and what they picture, the future that lies in store, not just for us but for the whole world.

That's how God will grant us eternal life in this kingdom and establish that kingdom for all of humanity on this earth. If you would, turn with me or just turn to the screen and look at Acts 1 verses 4 through 5. I'd like to focus a little more today on promises because we know that promises are woven all the way through God's Holy Day plan. Long before Jesus Christ ever came to earth, there was a sacrifice that was promised for us. His Holy Spirit was promised to us and God had a plan for eternal life.

If we turn to Acts 1 verses 4 and 5, this focuses on the time period really that we sit at right now between the days of 11, Brad and Pentecost. It's a time when the disciples, after Jesus Christ, had died and been resurrected and risen. They were assembling together and waiting. And what were they waiting for? Acts 1 verses 4 and 5. We see here that being assembled together with them, Jesus commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you've heard from me, for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not many days to come.

So this time that we're living through right now, day to day, between days of unleavened Brad and the Passover, are a time where the disciples waited almost two months, when we think about the 50 days from the Sabbath in between the days of unleavened Brad until Pentecost, and they waited for that promise to come. And so what I'd like to do today is take a little time to reflect on the story of God's promises and sit back and consider those promises and how they've worked themselves out and what we still have to look forward to, and especially how we reflect on those and him working in us in our lives.

What are God's promises in this part of his Holy Day plan? And why is it that we can really believe God? Let's spend some time delving into this. Now, if you're like me, you've probably had plenty of promises that were made to you that were broken. And so we really need to think about the promises that God made and how that's different than the promises that we've received from human beings. I've got a sort of a maxim that I've come up with in my life. I talk with my kids about it as I observe different things that happen around me, whether it's at work or in other places.

And one thing that I've noticed over the years that I've gone through life is that whenever you encounter people who talk about doing something a lot, they're probably the most least likely to follow up on it. So, for example, if you were talking to somebody and said, we've got a job to do tomorrow, can you meet me tomorrow at eight o'clock? We're going to go take care of this job. And they say, yep, eight o'clock, I'll be there. Maybe they write a short note down on paper or tap it into their iPhone and they go away.

And, you know, typically you'll believe that if you don't have a history that will tell you otherwise. And then you might run into some other people, and I've run into some of these I've gone through life, and you say, let's meet at eight o'clock tomorrow and take care of this job together. And then for the next five minutes they go on, they say, eight o'clock, you bet, I'll be there. Because there's one thing you can count on, is that that's that I always keep my word. And if I tell you I'm going to be there at eight o'clock, I'm going to be there, and I'll see you bright and early tomorrow, you can count on me.

And I don't know if your experience has been similar to mine, but every time I run into people that give me too many assurances, I start to wonder if it's really going to happen. What about the promises that God gave us, though? Let's reflect on those for a few minutes. This first section will be relatively brief, but I want to focus first of all on what the promises are that are embedded in these two Holy Days, the ones that we just kept, the Passover and Days of My Love and Bread, and the one that's upcoming, which is Passover.

And as you see here on the screen, those promises are of forgiveness and of the Holy Spirit. And I picked these two out deliberately, really, and you know, as we go into it, maybe just some framing thoughts around those. I'm a person who grew up in the in the church, and so my experience after baptism, like so many others who grew up in the church, is different from people who come to the truth when they're adults.

The changes in life are different, and the things that you question, the things you think about, are different as well. And I can certainly remember going back actually 30 years ago now to the time that I was baptized, and also talking with friends who've grown up in the church at that time and since. You know, one of the things that it took me a while to really have full confidence and belief in was that I had the Holy Spirit. Life didn't seem that terribly different the day after I was baptized than the day before I was baptized.

And it took me time to really understand and to learn how it is that God's Holy Spirit is working within me. And as I look back now, three decades later, I can say with great confidence that I do believe that God has given me His Holy Spirit and called me and is working in me.

But it's something that happens gradually over time. And I think, especially this time of year, we've been here at home for, I guess, five or six weeks now. There's a set of trees up and down our street. They're always the first ones to bloom. And we've been taking a lot more walks since we've all been at home. And I've been watching those trees pretty much every day when I've gone out for a walk. And the change has been incredibly gradual. And I can remember four or five weeks ago when this first started looking at the buds on the trees and thinking, you know, any day now those buds are going to open up.

But it's so slow and so incremental that day by day you really couldn't even see what it was that's happening. And actually just this morning as I was going out for a walk and looking at those buds on the trees, I can see that quite a number of them now opened up and become fully blossoming blossoms on the trees. And that's really the way the experience is. I think for a lot of people who've grown up in the church, in fact it takes time. And we have to think about the promises that God's made and also focus on doing the things that we need to in our lives.

We will see that growth and we'll see that progression in our lives. Now for people who come into the church as adults, the experience can be quite different.

I've had people share with me the question of how do I know that I've really been forgiven? I look at the things that I've done in life. I look at the life that I've led and the things that I did, the things that perhaps I did to others or that happened to others because of me. And how can I really know that I've been forgiven? And that's why I'd like to focus first on these couple of promises and then move forward from there. Let's focus first on forgiveness and a couple of scriptures.

We'll start in Romans 3 verses 23 through 25. Here Paul writes that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely though by His grace through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood through faith to demonstrate His righteousness because in His forbearance God has passed over the sins that were previously committed.

And so if we take God at His word, and we'll talk more about how and why we believe we should do that, God clearly says that He's passed over the sins that were previously committed. And just like we thought it passed over time, back to the time when the firstborn were killed by the death angel in ancient Egypt, and it was the blood on the doorpost that the death angel passed over those households.

And it's using a similar analogy here that the sins that we've committed have been fully forgiven and passed over. That penalty of death does not apply. We read further in Romans 8 verse 12 where Paul says that God will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their lawless deeds. God says, I will remember no more. And so as we look at our lives, we look at and reflect sometimes looking back on the things that we've done, we need to rest in these promises and understand that we can leave that past behind us and we can move forward in confidence, knowing that God has forgiven us of those sins.

And this isn't something that just came about when Jesus Christ came to earth. This is part of a long-standing plan, as we know, that God had for mankind. All the way back in Jeremiah, one of the prophets that spoke to ancient Israel, we see this talk about in verse in chapter 31 verses 31 and 33.

There Jeremiah writes, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. And this is probably a good turning point scripture to talk just from the concept of forgiveness itself, and to move on to this Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God that He gives us.

Because here, when He talks about making a new covenant and putting the law in our minds and writing it in our hearts, what God is talking about is having the Holy Spirit dwell within us. So that rather than spending our days trying to live according to the letter of different precepts that are given, as that Spirit of God lives with us, His very mind and His way of being and the way that He wants to do things comes out in the actions that we do day to day.

This is a promise that Jesus Christ echoed during His lifetime earlier in His ministry. John 7 verses 37 through 39. He, on the last day of the feast, Jesus was standing in front of a large group of people, and He cried out saying that, if anyone first let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, which those believing in Him would receive, for the Holy Spirit was not yet given because Jesus Christ was not yet glorified. And John, of course, was writing this account a number of years later after the death of Jesus Christ. So he could look back on that time and say, this is a promise that Jesus Christ made.

He was talking about the Holy Spirit that would be granted. And John lived to see that promise when it was granted on the day of Pentecost, and all the changes and the development that happened in the founding of the church as a result of that. John 14, in some of the words that Jesus prayed, right before he was taken captive to be crucified, John 14 verses 16 and 17, he says, I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper that He may abide with you forever, talking here to the disciples.

In verse 17, he identifies that as the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him, but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. And so we see this ongoing promise, one of the center points of Jesus Christ, so important that he was bringing it up there at the very end of his ministry, and talking with his disciples right before his crucifixion, that the Holy Spirit would come. So in this short first section, as we've looked at God's promises in Passover and Pentecost, two things that God has shown us quite clearly and promised, and that is forgiveness and His Holy Spirit. And let's pause just for a moment and think about that. We have rehearsed everything about the death of Jesus Christ through these last Holy Days to pass over in the days of Unleavened Bread. We look forward to the day of Pentecost, which again is a commemoration of the time, really the age, that we're living in today, a time when the Holy Spirit is available to us. Do we believe in those promises? How is it that we know that those promises have been fulfilled? That's a message I think of great encouragement we can take, encouragement in that, and that's what I'd like to focus on for the rest of the message today.

Why is it that we can believe God? And I'm going to put this into two basic categories of His character and His actions.

So, you know, I talked earlier about people who give you too many assurances when they make a promise to the point where they've assured you so much you don't really believe what they're saying anymore.

And really, in the end with people, I think we've all experienced this, we know over time why we can believe somebody based on how it is that that person acts, right? If we're getting work done on our house, we'll tend to go out, whether it's online to one of the listing agencies or Google or wherever we can, we'll look at reviews, won't we? And we'll see what have other people's experiences been with this person who's going to put a new roof on my house or do some painting for me.

And we look through those things carefully because we want to understand what is the character and what have the actions been of this person that I'm going to hire to do important work on my house. Likewise, we might do the same thing if we're going on vacation somewhere.

Airbnb, if you're going on there and booking a place, people always look at the reviews, don't they? Even before you get into an Uber, people will look at the reviews and if somebody's a driver and they have two or three SARS, we'll often say, no, we're not going to go with that one.

We'll wait and we'll pick another one. So it's important that we think about God. What is his character and how has he proven that character through his actions? And I hope that you'll find as we look through some of this today and the balance of this message that we can take a great deal of encouragement as we look at that and what God's track record is and how he's dealt with human beings all the way through history.

Let's start in Micah 7, verse 18. Here the prophet Micah writes, who is a god like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of this heritage? He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in mercy. I used this scripture in a sermon that I gave probably a year and a half or so ago and I was thrilled and I would say humbled by an email that I received a month or so after I gave a message.

It was from somebody who'd listened to it online and they said, you know, when you zeroed in on this verse and the fact that God delights in mercy, this person wrote and said it changed her relationship with God because it forced her to focus on God in a way that was completely different than she conceived of in the past. And that's why I'd like to take a few minutes thinking about now as we get into the second part of the message.

What does it mean to delight in mercy? You know, God and humans, we're built after God's image. We seek to do things that we delight in and I think you'll see as we go through this message, one of the things that God does is seek to do mercy, to show mercy to people because it's something he delights in.

The holy days and the plan that they display are a story of God's mercy. It goes all the way through the Bible. We think right from the beginning when Jesus Christ is sacrificed on Passover and everything that means for merciful God who gives up his Son and Jesus giving his life up willingly so that people who are in sin can be forgiven and become ultimately a part of his family.

And the ultimate mercy of God that it is made available to everybody, which is the fantastic truth that lies at the end of God's holy day plan, which is that he wants everybody who's ever lived to be a part of his family and to inherit his promises. But, you know, let's think a little bit more about this idea of delighting in things.

So we're living a different world right now, certainly from a working perspective. I, like I mentioned, do pretty much all my work day to day sitting right here in this room. I'm getting a little tired of sitting in this room staring at a screen to tell you the truth.

And what some of our teams have started doing is to do virtual social gatherings after a meeting, like at the end of the day or something. And people get a chance just to talk and talk about some of the things they were doing.

I was on one video call this past week with a team last Monday, and everyone was going around talking about their pets, bringing their pets up onto the screen, onto the camera, kind of like we do after services, right? With those of us who have different pets. I was on with another lady who has two kids, and they live backing to a lake.

And the kids, of course, came up and had to wave and say hello. And I asked them what they were doing. They got these huge smiles on their face, and they said, we love fishing! We love fishing! We spend all our time fishing. And their mom took a computer and turned it around and followed them down onto this dock, and they showed me this bucket full of fish that they caught. And they were getting ready to release them back out again.

They were thrilled. You could see their eyes light up, and they were delighting in the idea of fishing. And I always think back to another story, too. Back last fall, I was at a meeting in New York with a group of people.

There was probably about 30 of us. And we'd gotten done with our meetings for the day, and we sat down for dinner. And the person organizing the dinner said, you know, we need to get to know each other a little bit better. So let's have everybody stand up and tell us a little bit about yourselves and tell us a personal story.

What do you like to do? What's something unique and interesting? And I'll never forget this one guy got up and started talking. We were supposed to talk for a minute or two. And he started to talk about his standard poodle. He's got a poodle that stands two or three feet high. And its name is Marty. I'll never forget this poodle's name because he went on and told us everything he could possibly think of related to his poodle named Marty.

Apparently, Marty's a particularly good-looking poodle, whatever that means, and was hired by some professional photographers to be in a magazine shoot. I think it was for Vogue or Vanity Fair, you know, fairly well-known magazine. And so this colleague of mine was just going on and on about his poodle and all the things his poodle does and the money he made out of this photo shoot and how his dog had become famous. I mean, he was clearly just excited about this. His dog was something he delighted in. And it didn't even end there. The next day we got into our meeting and so many people have made comments about Marty the poodle that this colleague, before the meeting started, plugged his computer in on the screen and pulled up a picture of Marty.

And we spent another five minutes talking about Marty the poodle as we saw him up there on the screen. That was something Marty the poodle was something my colleague just delighted in. It's clearly, you know, he loved to spend time with that dog, take care of it, take it for walks, take it to photo shoots, and everything else. But, you know, when we think about God in that same vein, God tells us he delights in mercy. You know, I like to think that if we sat down at a meal with God, he'd keep us there for an extra 30 minutes.

But the stories he would tell us wouldn't be about Marty the poodle. The stories he would tell us would be about mercy, how he had mercy on somebody who was in a particular circumstance. And then he'd say, wait a second, don't leave yet. I've got another one. I got to tell you about this other person and the situation they were in, and how I was able to draw them to me and forgive them, and to give them mercy. When God says he delights in mercy, we need to think about that in the terms sometimes that we think, and how God shows that, and how much he believes in doing that.

Now, let's recount some stories of his mercy, because I think you'll see that I'm not exaggerating when I say this as we walk through some of the scriptures.

Why don't we start in Deuteronomy? So we'll take a brief walk here through the Old Testament, and some of the ways that God dealt, starting with the children of Israel. In Deuteronomy 30, this is a passage where Joshua was talking to the children of Israel as they were getting ready to enter the Promised Land. And of course, in Deuteronomy, he was rehearsing many of the things, the experiences that the Israelites had had, and how God had delivered them from Egypt, and brought them all the way to the Promised Land. And in verse 1 of Deuteronomy 30, we read, it shall come to pass when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I've set before you, and you call them to mind among the nations where the Lord your God drives you. So we see right here that there was an understanding early on that human beings are weak, that even though God had given the children of Israel so much, given them warnings and the blessings that could happen to them, but also the curses that could happen if they went the wrong way, there was immediate acknowledgement of God's part that things were going to happen. They were going to go the wrong way, and curses were going to come. But in verse 2, note what God says. You return to the Lord your God, if you return to the Lord your God and obey his voice according to all that I command you today, you and your children with all your heart and with all your soul, then the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you. Now this is not a unique passage in the Old Testament. You'll see that as maybe I even bore you to death a little bit as we go through verse after verse after verse in the Old Testament that lays out this exact same characteristic. And you know, we don't always think about the God of the Old Testament being a God of mercy, do we? But this is where it started with the children of Israel, the acknowledgement that they would go astray and the willingness that if they would turn back to him he would take them back. Let's go to Isaiah, the prophet that prophesied quite some time later in the latter days of the kings of Israel and Judah as there was a divided kingdom at that time. And in Isaiah 55 verse 7 he writes, let the wicked forsake his way, let the unrighteous man his thoughts, let him return to the Lord and he will have mercy on him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon.

So even in Isaiah and then Jeremiah, you know, there's a term it's not used as much these days, I guess, as as people know the Bible less, but there's a well-known term of somebody writing something that's called a duremiad. And it's meant to be to refer to like a really negative story because Jeremiah was so negative in the prophecies that he wrote of the things that were going to befall Israel because of their unrighteousness.

But in the middle of all of these things that Jeremiah writes, all these indictments against how people had turned against God, there's also this same story of mercy that comes through. Jeremiah 3 verse 12, go and proclaim these words toward the north, talking about the northern kingdom of Israel, and say return backsliding Israel, says the Lord, I will not cause my anger to fall on you, for I am merciful, says the Lord, I will not remain angry forever.

So even through the prophet that was prophesying all of this downfall, all of these cataclysms that would happen on Israel, there was also a message embedded in here of mercy, and that if Israel would simply return to God, that he would take them back and he would not remain angry with them forever.

Let's go on down the road to Nehemiah. Some might remember that Nehemiah was post-captivity, so after the children of Israel and Judah were taken away to captivity, some were allowed to return to re-establish a Jewish presence in what's now known as Israel, or the Holy Land. And Nehemiah 1 verse 8 and 9, as Nehemiah is talking, he's reflecting back on some of these promises that were made, and what was able to happen to his people as a result of those promises.

Nehemiah 1 starting verse 8, So we see here is just this ongoing theme, don't we? What of mercy? Of people who will return and repent and follow God's ways? Being accepted back, being taken back, being forgiven and restored to their old place. But we're not done yet. We go into the minor prophets, and we could talk some other time about whether it's nice to be known as a minor prophet or not.

Sometimes you wonder when when Hosea arises in the resurrection, here he was just a minor prophet. How is he going to feel about that? But the minor prophets are shorter books of prophecy, which is why they're called the minor prophets, as opposed to some of the much longer books I think Isaiah has something like 66 chapters in. The story of Hosea is only three chapters long, and you can go back and read through the details if you'd like. I'm not going to read through the details today, but let me recount the story briefly for those who don't remember it.

Hosea was somebody who was asked as a prophet by God to act out essentially God's mercy to the children of Israel, and he was asked to do some things that would seem pretty strange to us today, but this is something that God wanted Hosea to do as a message to the people he was living with. He was asked to marry a harlot and to have a family with her, which is what he did.

And with this woman, he had three children, and as time went on, this woman returned her old ways. So if you think of Hosea, if you think of a man who's married, married somebody who already had somewhat dubious morals, established a family with that person, and then she would act her old ways, any man in his right mind would have moved on and said, that's it, I'm severing things, I'm gone, and forget it.

But God commanded him to do something different. God commanded Hosea to go and to find her, to find the people that she had become indebted to, and essentially enslaved to because of those debts, to pay off those debts, and not only that, but to take her back fully as his wife. Now as we look back on that story, it's so extreme that it seems really strange to the point that we would question, why would God even have somebody do this?

But I think that's the point of it here as well, and that is that the mercy that God has, his willingness to go back and get us, to bring us back, to allow us to repent and be forgiven by him, is something that goes so far beyond anything that we as human beings can even conceive of. That he uses an analogy like this, which is just an inconceivable betrayal when we look at it, and he uses that as an analogy for his people, and why it is that when they turn to him, he will show mercy.

So in all of these things, these are stories that are displaying the kind of mercy and the viewpoint that God has towards people. And this carries right on into the New Testament as well. Jesus Christ, as we know, was there in the Old Testament. We believe he was the God of the Old Testament that was interacting with Israel. And in John 6, verse 39, he states, This is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all he has given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last stage.

And so we see this same intent, this same state of mind that we see all through the Old Testament of God not wanting to lose Israel and Judah, of opening that door to bring them back if they would only repent, to take them back and to forget their sins. And we see that same attitude brought forward into the New Testament as Jesus Christ comes and lives his life among human beings.

So why can we believe in him? In terms of his character, everything that he says about himself that is displayed through these prophecies, through these communications with people, through all of these promises he showed a character of mercy and forgiveness. And we see this recurring theme over and over and over of accepting those to turn to him, even to some ends that we can't even really fathom as human beings.

And, you know, the promises that we see are hard for people to trust. And all of these things we could say are just words. So what is it that he's actually done? Because, you know, when we evaluate a promise, we think not just of what people say, the glossy promotional flyer that we get, we probably all stayed at a place or gone to visit a place where we saw the pictures, and they were all taken at very careful angles.

They would look fantastic. But when we get there, we see the full story. It's not quite the same. So in addition to all of these things that God said, there's a lot that God did. And as we consider the story of His mercy and continue to walk through it, let's look now at the things that He actually did, not just the things that He said He would do.

We'll start just briefly thinking through the physical deliverance of Israel. You know, we heard in the sermon just on Wednesday on the last Holy Day about Egypt and the Red Sea crossing, and the fantastic miracle that was. And God showed up in terms of the plagues that He brought on to Egypt, the freeing of the children of Israel, and then bringing them through that Red Sea crossing, having it completely unquestionable that He had a devotion to these people, and that despite their murmuring and despite the difficulties, that He was going to bring them through it and wanted to bring them to a new place.

We think forward from there, think of the Battle of Jericho, if we can recall that. Here was this huge fortress, something that even large, well-developed armies were unable to take, and miraculously God had them conquer that city, and in a very unconventional way. He had them walk around it in the circle, blowing their horns and blowing trumpets. I'm sure the people inside Jericho were wondering what in the world was going on, because it seemed like a strange way to to lay siege to a city. But God delivered that to them without bloodshed.

He simply took the walls down, and they were able to conquer without having to really go into a fight and expose themselves to these these massive defenses at Jericho. And then the story that we might not remember quite as clearly, but one of my favorites actually in the Old Testament, King Hezekiah, 2 Kings 18 and 19. King Hezekiah was a righteous king, kind of unusual in the nation of Judah, and he made some mistakes and got himself into trouble with the nations around him.

And Assyria, which was the dominant world power of his time, was encamped right there outside of the walls of Jerusalem. 185,000 men, the most magnificent fighting force that existed at his point in history. And what happened? Assyria, the Assyrian general, delivered this threatening letter after all the taunts that they were hurling up on the walls at people of Judah. And Hezekiah took that letter, he laid it down in front of God, and he asked God for mercy and deliverance.

And the next morning, they woke up, and what did they notice? It was incredibly quiet outside. All the clanking of pots and starting the fires and all the other things you might have heard in the morning from an army of 185,000 men, there was nothing to be heard. And the scouts sheepishly went out to see what had happened. What did they find? They found 185,000 dead Assyrians in their tents. God had miraculously just struck them down. Israel didn't even have to strike a blow, or Judah in this case. And so God delivered them physically, exactly demonstrating what He had written about in all of those different passages that we talked about.

But it doesn't stop at physical deliverance. Let's think about spiritual deliverance as well. You know, the Old Testament, very few people had a relationship with God through His Holy Spirit. We know that David was one of those. And in Psalm 51, we actually sang part of this in one of our hymns today. Let's read Psalm 51 a few verses from the passage starting verse one. David writes, have mercy on me, O God.

He knew God as a merciful God. He read these scriptures that we talked about. He would have been aware of these accounts from preceding his time during the Old Testament. According to your loving kindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions and wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is always before me. So David took this model that we see written up starting right back in Deuteronomy when God was first launching Israel, if you will. And he took this model and said if he recognized that if he returned to God and confessed his ways, that God would take him back.

Create me a clean heart, he says in verse 10, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Don't cast me away from your presence and don't take your Holy Spirit from me. David was one of those rare people in the New Old Testament, and we don't know how or why, but God granted him his Holy Spirit. We can clearly see it in the way that David lived his life and how he turned back to God.

There's another example that I would guess most of us probably haven't thought about, and this one to me is an incredibly powerful example again, and it's King Manasseh. I left a couple scriptural sites here for anyone who wants to go back and read the story later, but it's in 2 Kings 21 and 2 Chronicles 33. Now, it just so happens Manasseh was the son of King Hezekiah that we talked about just a few minutes ago, and even though he grew up with a father in Hezekiah, who did everything according God's way and established true worship in Israel, Manasseh, when he came to power as a young teenager, decided not to follow that way, and he pretty quickly veered off and became one of the most corrupt kings and idolatrous kings that Judah had ever seen.

He restored idol worship to Judah, so he, even in the temple of Solomon, he set up altars to pagan gods, and in fact it got so bad that he re-instituted child sacrifice and even sacrificed his own son as a child sacrifice. So he'd gone completely and fully into idolatry. He was so wicked he was believed to be the one that had the prophet Isaiah killed by having him son in two, because he was tired hearing the prophecies against him and what it was that God was going to do because of the way that he was living his life and directing his nation.

And as we would expect, and as we've read a lot of these Old Testament accounts, he was taken captive by these serians, but not only that, the Bible tells us it was done with hooks and fetters. And if you read some of the commentators, they would tell you that the hooks probably means that literally a ring was put through the nose, and we use the expression leading somebody around by the nose. It's very likely that Manasseh was quite literally led by the nose with a chain into captivity by the Assyrians.

So at the end of the story, as you could guess, it's not. 2 Chronicles 33, we'll read verses 12 and 13. What do you think somebody like this deserved? What do you think God would do to a person like this? The answer might be a little surprising, especially when we think about the preconception of this God of the Old Testament, who's always looking for chances to bring lightning bolts down on people.

2 Chronicles 33 verse 12. Now, when he was in affliction, this is referring to King Manasseh, he'd been rotting away in a dungeon in Assyria. He implored the Lord his God, and he humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. And he prayed to him, verse 13, and he received his entreaty, heard his supplication, and God brought him back to Jerusalem into his kingdom. And then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.

This is an incredible story of redemption out of the Old Testament, one that we don't necessarily think that we would find there. And it's true that, just like we have to suffer for some of the things we do, the sinful acts that we do, the bad decisions that we make, God can still forgive us.

And he does, just like he did for Manasseh. Now, it's unfortunate for Manasseh, because of the things that he did, he had to spend the time that he did in this imprisonment in pretty awful circumstances from everything we can understand. But what's also instructive is the fact that as he implored God and humbled himself before God, as he acknowledged the sins that he committed, God, as a tremendous example, forgave him and re-established him in his kingdom.

And he went on to reign for several war years, living the righteous life and undoing some of the horrible decisions that he'd made early on as a king in Judah.

So for centuries before Jesus Christ came on the scene, and that's something I want us to think about and reflect for a moment about, you know, we think about the fact that Jesus Christ came, he was merciful, he gave his life for our sins, and were forgiven through that. But how often do we think about the fact that that was a continuation of a process, a way of thinking and being and acting, an intrinsic way that God was being merciful? And Jesus Christ was not the first step. He was the logical continuation that brought forgiveness and the ability for the Holy Spirit to come. But we had an established track record by God of promising mercy and not only promising it, but following through on that promise for thousands of years before Jesus Christ ever came on the scene. And of course, the actions of Jesus Christ in the end enabled that ultimate fulfillment of God's promise, the one we look forward to on the day of Pentecost.

So let's look at a few of these actions in the New Testament, which we're very familiar with, so we won't spend a ton of time on these. John 10 verses 14 through 16.

So a couple noteworthy things that Jesus is saying here. One is he laid his life down voluntarily. There are other passages where it's quite clear he says, my life was not taken from me. I voluntarily gave my life. And that's important to know because it's something that God did, that Jesus Christ did, voluntarily to sacrifice his life for our sins. And as it refers to in the latter part of verse 16 as well, it's so that all people could come to God. The store of the Old Testament had to do with God and his promises to Israel as a nation. And as we see here, as Jesus Christ came, that same promise, that same mercy, that same way of being, was going to be established for everyone. Children of Israel, Jews, and others as well. Luke 15, keeping the theme of sheep, Luke 15 verses 4 through 7. Jesus Christ tells a parable as he's speaking with some folks. And he says, what man of you having a hundred sheep, talking, I think, here with the Pharisees, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one which is lost until he finds it. And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, rejoice with me, for I found my sheep which was lost. Now, the Pharisees were probably pretty stunned when they heard this, because he said this in response to questions about why he was eating the sinners and not spending his time with these righteous Pharisees, who, you know, if he was really the son of God, who wouldn't be wanted just to deal with the righteous people and leave all those filthy sinners alone. But what did Jesus Christ say? What he's saying here is, just as we see through the entire history of the Bible, a merciful God who wants everybody to be a part of his family, who is ready and willing to give forgiveness for anyone who repents to him, that his very nature would be to go after the one that's lost until he finds it. We wouldn't, we're not surprised at this point, I hope, after everything that we've read, that this is something that Jesus Christ would talk about. In fact, it's completely consistent with his character and his actions as we understand it through everything we've seen. And likewise in verse 7, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents than over 99 just persons who need no repentance. Just another way to say that God delights in mercy. Every bit as much today, every bit as much through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, as he did back in the Old Testament, Mike first wrote that verse. Let's go on to John 17. We read earlier John 6, where Jesus Christ said that his mission was to keep all of those who were given to him. And in John 17, right in the last parts of his life, he says, now I am no longer in the world, but these, talking about the disciples, are in the world, and I come to you. Holy Father, keep through your name those whom you have given me, that they may be one as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name. Those whom you gave me I have kept, and none of them is lost, except the son of perdition that the scripture might be fulfilling. And so Jesus Christ knew that Judas Iscariot would have to do what he was foreordained to do in betraying him. But at the same time, and not a wrong way, he took pride in saying, those that you gave me to care for, I have cared for them.

The disciples that God gives to Jesus Christ, the people who are called by his name, Jesus Christ is focused on keeping them and caring for them and not losing them. Paul understood this as well, as he writes in Philippians 1 verses 3 through 6. This is something that we can and should take huge amounts of confidence in as we read it. Philippians 1 verses 3 through 6. Paul tells the Philippians, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine, making requests for you with joy. For your fellowship in the gospel from the very first day till now, being confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. How was it that Paul could be so confident in that? I would think that Paul spent a lot of time thinking about things that God had done over the ages. And just as we've walked through some of this story of God's mercy as it unfolds, of the promises he's made and how he's kept those promises, reflecting on those things gave Paul the confidence that God who's begun a good work in those who were called through Paul that it would be completed in them.

So as we wrap up this section of the sermon, why can we believe in him? His character. We've read through a whole load of scriptures and incidents in the Bible that say not only what it is that God's approach is, but what the actions are to back up that approach. And the fact that he's made promises, those promises surround his mercy. Promise of forgiveness, of our sins, the promise of his only spirit. Things that he does to reconcile us to him through his mercy. So as we think about where we stand right now between the days of Unleavened Bread and Pentecost, we think a lot about the promises that God made. Of course, there's that third promise of eternal life that we haven't focused on right now because in the season that we're in. But these promises are central to the time that we're in right now between Passover and Pentecost. The promise of forgiveness, which we've been granted. The promise of his spirit, which we have been granted because of living in that age of Pentecost. And his character, as demonstrated repeatedly through history, allows us to be confident in his mercy and his promises. So as we go forward, as we look towards Pentecost, as we live our lives, even in this very chaotic and difficult time, there's probably not been a greater time of uncertainty in a hundred years. Probably going back to World War I, World War II, would be the last time there's been this level of uncertainty in our society. As a lot of us wonder what's going to happen if we're coming out of this how, when, and how does it all unfold. But the one thing that we can have is confidence in the promises that God has given in his mercy and his grace that he gives us. And I hope rehearsing these things today and looking through that story is encouraging and strengthening to all of us. Let's close with description 2 Peter 2. 2 Peter 2 verses 2 through 4. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord, as his divine power has given to us all things that pertains to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who has called who called us by glory and virtue by which we have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through must. Wish everyone a happy rest of the Sabbath and encourage you to continue to think about God's promises and the deliverance that he continues to give us in our lives.

Thank you very much, Andy. And now we'll wrap up services with one last hymn. Our last hymn will be number 104, the Trumpet Shall Sound, and then following that we will have our closing prayer from Mr. Mike Rebar.

We hope I show, I show you all a mystery We shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed In just a while, the twinkling of the night You'll see, the trumpets shall sound And we shall all be raised But thanks to God, who gave it thus though he told me Who cries, O Lord, eternal living one O ways of God, and to the word his heavenly Beloved of God, and Christ his chosen sons O death, O pray, where is your sin your victory The sting of death is sin defined by love And when this mortal blow of the immortality The trumpets shall sound, rejoice forevermore God thanks to God, who gave it thus though he told me Who cries, O Lord, eternal living one O ways of God, and to the word his heavenly Beloved of God, and Christ his chosen sons And now for our closing prayer. Again, we'll have Mr. Mike Rebar. Oh, great and merciful Father, we're so grateful to come before you and to gather on this Holy Sabbath day with this technology. We're so grateful for the message we had today to learn about your forgiveness for us. Each one of us has been forgiven by you and allowed to enter into your family through the gift of the Holy Spirit. We're so grateful for everything you've done for us in our lives. We know, Father, that you have proven that you're worthy through your actions over time in the Old Covenant, in the Renewed Covenant, especially through the sacrifice of your only son, Jesus Christ. We are certainly not worthy, Father, of this sacrifice. We humbly come before you today, asking for you for guidance and love during this time of change, looking forward to the Feast of Pentecost. We close this service in trusting you in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.