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Well, friends, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word.
We return to our consideration of the book of the prophet Isaiah, and we find ourselves
this Lord’s Day morning in Isaiah chapter 14, verses 1 through 4.
And to kind of fill out the context a little bit, I’m going to begin reading in chapter
13, verse 17.
We need to remember that the text of Scripture is inspired.
The chapter and verse divisions are given by men to help us navigate our way through
the Scriptures.
And so to fill out the context a little bit, I begin reading in chapter 13, verse 17, and
I’ll read through chapter 14, verse 4.
And here begins a passage where we have the tail end of a judgment oracle against Babylon.
So hear God’s holy word, Isaiah 13, beginning of verse 17.
Behold, I am stirring up the meads against them, who have no regard for silver, and do
not delight in gold.
Their bows will slaughter the young men.
They will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb.
Their eyes will not pity children.
And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendor and pomp of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom
and Gomorrah when God overthrew them.
It will never be inhabited or lived in for all generations.
No Arab will pitch his tent there.
No shepherds will make their flocks lie down there.
But wild animals will lie down there, and their houses will be full of howling creatures.
Their ostriches will dwell, and their wild goats will dance.
Hyenas will cry in its towers and jackals in the pleasant palaces.
Its time is close at hand, and its days will not be prolonged.
For the Lord will have compassion on Jacob, and will again choose Israel, and will set
them in their own land.
And sojourners will join them, and will attach themselves to the house of Jacob.
And the peoples will take them and bring them to their place.
And the house of Israel will possess them in the Lord’s land as male and female slaves.
They will take captive those who were their captors, and rule over those who oppress them.
When the Lord has given you rest from your pain and turmoil, and the hard service with
which you were made to serve, you will take up this taunt against the King of Babylon.
How the oppressor has ceased, the insolent fury ceased.
Dear ones, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the proclamation of his word.
Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you that you have not left us without
a sure and certain word.
You have given us a sure and certain word in the Holy Scriptures, for they are your
inerrant, infallible, authoritative word.
We pray, Lord, that by your Spirit you would illuminate our minds and our hearts, help
us to understand that which the Spirit speaks to us in this portion of your God-breathed
Scriptures.
And once again, Lord, we ask that you would grant unto me your unworthy servant the grace
to declare and speak forth your word with clarity, with power, with the assistance and
unction of your Spirit.
We pray that Jesus would be present and exalted in the proclamation of your word, and that
we would be built up in our most holy faith.
In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen.
You may be seated.
Title of my sermon this morning is Jacob’s Restoration and the New Exodus.
And if you are following along in your sermon outline, I especially would want to encourage
the children.
I would point you to the key words that you can be listening for in my sermon this morning,
and those are the words Restoration, Kingdom, Expansion, Exodus, Rest, and Relief.
Well, my dear friends in Christ, one of the most comforting truths of Scripture is the
truth that God always keeps His promises.
God always keeps His promises even though we often break ours.
Now with that broad concept in mind, let’s reflect for a few moments upon the importance
and significance of promises.
You know, when you think about it, keeping our lawful promises is in many ways the glue
that holds life together.
Keeping our promises is key to a happy life, a happy home, and indeed a stable society.
Lawful promises that are kept and carried out, of course, they require the virtues of
faithfulness, loyalty, and consistency.
But on the other hand, broken promises are often the result of unfaithfulness, disloyalty,
or carelessness, forgetfulness, and what have you.
And so for example, the faithfulness and loyalty that are required for keeping our promises,
those qualities are essential ingredients to a healthy, stable marriage, to good friendships,
to ethical and reliable business practices, to a stable and just civil order, and to a
healthy church life.
After all, we are a covenant community and when we join the church we make promises to
God and to our brothers and sisters in Christ.
But on the other hand, the unfaithfulness, carelessness, and disloyalty that lead to
broken promises can destroy marriages, can damage friendships, can destabilize businesses,
can erode trust in our public institutions, can destabilize the civil order, and can even
split churches.
Dear ones, if you crack open the history book and you study the history of humanity, what
are you going to find?
Are you going to find a history of promises kept, commitments honored, and so forth?
No.
The history of fallen humanity is, to a large extent, a history of disloyalty, faithlessness,
broken promises, and downright cruelty.
But what about the history of God’s people?
That certainly would be different, wouldn’t it?
One would hope, of course, that the history of God’s people as recorded in the Scriptures
would be different.
But if you’re familiar with the Scriptures, especially if you’re familiar with the history
of God’s old covenant people, Israel, if you’re familiar with that, you will know that, sadly,
even the history of God’s covenant people, described here in our passage today as the
house of Jacob, is likewise, overwhelmingly, a history of faithlessness and disloyalty
toward Yahweh, their God.
Yahweh, by the way, when you read in your English Bibles the word Lord, and it’s all
in capital letters, that’s the translator signaling to the English reader that they
are translating the Hebrew name for God, Yahweh, and Yahweh is God’s covenant name.
It has in view God as our faithful covenant-making, covenant-keeping, Redeemer God.
But the people throughout their history were faithless.
They broke covenant with Yahweh, their God.
Because of their persistent covenant-breaking and unfaithfulness, the professed people of
God would ultimately be expelled from the promised land and sent by the Lord into exile.
Just as Adam and Eve, for their faithlessness, were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, sent
away to the east of Eden into exile.
Now, that raises the question, does this predicted exile of God’s people into Babylon, does that
mean that God is through with his people?
When God sends his people into exile, is it in essence God saying, you know, I’ve had
it with you people.
You are gone forever.
I don’t want to ever see you again.
Is that what it means?
Does it mean that they are cast off forever with no hope of restoration?
Well, praise God.
The answer to that question is a resounding, loud no.
For even though his people were faithless, even though they broke their promises, Yahweh
remains faithful and loyal to his gracious covenant commitments and promises to his people
in Christ.
And, friends, our passage for this Lord’s Day morning serves to underscore the blessed
truth that our sovereign triune God is a promise-keeping God.
He is a gracious God who will restore his humbled exiled people.
And he will do so through a new deliverance, a new deliverance that will mark a new stage
of redemptive history, a new exodus, if you will, that will ultimately be accomplished
by the promised Messiah, namely our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
So friends, with these truths in mind, let us turn our attention to our passage for today
as we focus first of all on verse 1, as we consider first the restoration of God’s kingdom
in the new exodus, the restoration of God’s kingdom in the new exodus.
It says this, for the Lord, that’s Yahweh, Israel’s faithful Redeemer God, the Lord will
have compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel and will set them in their own land.
And sojourners will join them and will attach themselves to the house of Jacob.
Now friends, this is obviously a prophecy about God’s people who are identified here
by various terms in verse 1.
They are identified as Jacob, as Israel, and as the house of Jacob.
All of those terms refer to the same group of people, namely God’s covenant people.
Now this chapter, chapter 14, follows on the heels of chapter 13, of course, which
contains an oracle of judgment against ancient Babylon, Babylon which had been used by the
Lord as an instrument of judgment and chastisement against the Lord’s faithless people.
This prophecy of Isaiah that we are considering this morning predicts the restoration of God’s
people to the promised land following the Babylonian exile.
And it is a passage, if you are a sensitive and careful Bible reader, this is a passage
where themes of the Exodus are interwoven into it.
It is interwoven with themes and allusions taken from the Exodus event.
You remember the Exodus when God supernaturally delivered his people from their slavery to
Pharaoh and the Egyptians.
He did so by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm.
He did so by pouring mighty supernatural plagues upon the Egyptians, by splitting the Red
Sea and bringing his people through the Red Sea on dry land.
And he led his people through that howling wilderness, giving them manna from heaven,
feeding them with manna from heaven and providing, quenching their thirst through giving them
water from the rock and so forth and ultimately bringing them into and establishing them in
the land of promise, the holy land.
These Exodus themes and allusions are significant because what this passage does is it points
us to a new Exodus, a new deliverance for God’s people.
Friends in passages like this one, God is revealing to his people that he’s going to
do something new.
He’s going to do something amazing.
He’s going to do something more amazing even than the Exodus, more amazing than delivering
his people from their slavery in Egypt and even more amazing than God’s restoration of
his people from their exile.
You see, when God delivered Israel from their slavery in Egypt, he delivered them from physical
bondage.
When God restored the post-exilic community from their Babylonian exile into the land,
he restored them from exile.
But ultimately, the promises of the covenant of grace are that God will save his people
not merely from physical bondage or geographical exile.
He will save his people from their bondage to sin.
Jesus is called Yeshua Jesus, why?
Because he will save his people from their sins and he will do so through the one who
has been revealed in Isaiah as the righteous branch, as the one who is the child to be
born to us, the son to be given, Immanuel, the one who upon whose shoulders is the government
of the peoples, the one who will later on be revealed in Isaiah as the suffering servant
of the Lord, namely Jesus, the promised Messiah.
Now let’s look at some of the details of this verse.
It says, for the Lord, and again that word Lord is Yahweh, the covenant name of God,
and the Lord is the Lord over his kingdom, and of course, God’s kingdom in its ultimate
sense, the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed is not simply his reign over the nations in
a providential sense, certainly Christ reigns over all in his providential kingdom.
He is the King of all creation.
All authority in heaven and earth has been given unto Christ, but the kingdom that is
proclaimed by Jesus is God’s reign of grace and salvation that have drawn near in the
person of King Jesus, the Messiah.
And here the Lord will have compassion on who?
On Jacob and will again choose Israel.
Jacob and Israel are referring to the same group of people.
And then it talks about how sojourners will join them and will attach themselves to the
house of Jacob.
Now why this language to describe God’s people?
Well this language hearkens back to God’s covenant promises to the patriarchs, the patriarchs
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
In the Old Testament, God often identifies himself as what?
He says, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
God made a covenant with Abraham and reaffirmed it with Isaac and Jacob, and that covenant
of grace that he made with them ultimately comes to fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So this language describing the people of God as the house of Jacob highlights the covenant
faithfulness of God, that God is always faithful in his covenant commitments to his people.
And what does it say of the Lord?
It says, for the Lord will have what?
Compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel.
To the people of God in exile who had experienced the heavy chastisement of the Lord, this would
be good news, that the Lord has not abandoned his compassion towards us, but he has renewed
his mercies, his compassions to us.
It has been said that God’s grace is his unmerited favor, his undeserved favor that deals with
the guilt of our sin.
Grace has in view, in particular, God’s legal satisfying of his own holy wrath against our
sin.
So it deals with the guilt of our sin.
And of course, grace and mercy or compassion are closely connected, but in his compassion,
God deals with us in the misery of our sin.
Sin results in misery, and God is compassionate towards those who are in the misery of their
sin.
He is compassionate toward his people who are suffering misery because of their own
sin.
So again, we learn here that God’s covenant of grace is grounded in his mercy, his compassion,
as well as in his gracious choice.
Now notice in this language, again, notice the allusions to the Exodus.
Yahweh will have compassion on his oppressed, exiled people, just as he had had compassion
in the past on his people when they were enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt.
And we see this compassion and this Exodus theme as we reflect on the words of Exodus
3, verses 7 through 10.
I’d invite you to turn there, Exodus chapter 3, verses 7 through 10, and consider the similarity
of the language here describing God taking notice of his people and having compassion
on his people and how this might be in the background of Isaiah’s mind as he writes
under the inspiration of the Spirit, the passage that we are considering today.
Exodus 3, beginning at verse 7, and this is the scene is the burning bush.
Moses is being called to his prophetic service as he is before the burning bush, and it says
this,
Then the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt,
and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters.
I know their sufferings.
Let me pause there.
This is so comforting because God takes note of our sufferings.
He hears the cries of his children.
Sometimes God seems distant.
Sometimes he seems uncaring and uninvolved, but this helps us to see that our God is a
compassionate God.
And he goes on to say,
And I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them
up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the
place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and
the Jebusites.
And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come up to me, and I have also
seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them.
Come, I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel,
out of Egypt.
The Lord is going to act motivated by his mercy, his compassion.
What about election?
What about where it says in our passage for today that the Lord not only will have compassion
on Jacob, but will again choose Israel.
He will again choose Israel.
Versions like the New King James Version translated it as, He will still choose Israel.
Now, there are some illegitimate inferences that could be made from this kind of language.
This might give you the impression that God’s election, God’s choice, is something that
we could lose.
That God may choose you and elect you one day, and then say, you know, I think I’ve
changed my mind the next day.
But again, this language does not mean that Israel as God’s people, at least the true
Israel of God, ever lost their election.
That’s not what it means.
After all, as we are reminded in Romans chapter 11 verse 29, for the gifts and the calling
of God are irrevocable.
Instead, friends, I believe what this language amounts to is God reaffirming his electing
grace toward the true Israel of God.
And again, this too is an Exodus theme.
We see it reflected, for example, back in Deuteronomy 7 verses 6 through 11, if you’d
like to turn there, Deuteronomy chapter 7 verses 6 through 11.
Now, Deuteronomy was written by Moses and delivered to the people after their wilderness
wanderings as they were preparing to go in and conquer the promised land.
And the Lord through Moses reminds his people of their identity of who they are.
And he says this beginning at verse 6, Deuteronomy 7 beginning at verse 6, it says, for you are
a people holy, that is set apart to the Lord your God.
The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the
peoples who are on the face of the earth.
It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his
love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples.
But it is because the Lord loves you.
Now pause there.
Why does the Lord choose his people?
Because he loves them, simply because he loves them in sovereign grace.
It is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that
the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery
from the hand of Pharaoh, King of Egypt.
Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast
love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations and
repays to their face those who hate him by destroying them.
He will not be slack with one who hates him.
He will repay him to his face.
You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command
you today.
And I read on in this passage to show that God’s electing grace does not negate our responsibility
of faithful obedience.
But in other words, friends, God has not rejected his people.
He’s renewing his electing grace and he’s going to show it by bringing them back from
exile.
And what does it say next?
It says that he will set them in their own land.
Now this reminds us of how God settled his people into the promised land.
And since the promised land is but a picture, a type, a pointer to the ultimate promised
land of the new creation, the new heavens and the new earth where in righteousness dwells,
this ultimately points us, beloved, to our salvation and eternal life in Christ.
When it says that the Lord will have compassion and choose Israel again and will set them
in their own land, this is ultimately saying the Lord will save his people by his grace,
alone.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us stand in awe of our promise-making, promise-keeping
God.
Let us praise God that because of his covenant faithfulness, his grace given to us in Christ
is unconquerable.
Believer, God’s grace to you and to me is an unconquerable grace.
It is a grace that you can stake your claim on.
It is a grace that will not let you go.
Praise God that the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable and that when we are faithless,
he still remains faithful.
That’s not an excuse to be faithless or to be loosey-goosey in our walk with the Lord,
but it is to say that when we fail, and we will fail, the Lord’s mercies are new every
morning and God will renew his compassion to us.
So we see, my friends, we see God’s grace toward his people, but next consider what
we learn here about the expansion of God’s kingdom in the New Exodus, the expansion of
God’s kingdom in the New Exodus.
It says in verse 1 through verse 2, it says, and sojourners will join them and will attach
themselves to the house of Jacob and the peoples will take them and bring them to
their place and the house of Israel will possess them in the Lord’s land as male and female
slaves and so forth.
Now this section of our passage predicts the engrafting and inclusion of Gentiles, of sojourners,
those who are outsiders to ethnic Israel, into the peoples and kingdom of God.
In the New Exodus, in Christ, sojourners from among the Gentile nations will join themselves
to the covenant people of God.
And joining yourself to the covenant people of God, what does that imply?
That implies that you’ve joined yourself by grace through faith to the God of the covenant.
You’ve put your faith in him, you’ve attached yourself to him, the true and living God.
This language is also an allusion to the original Exodus event.
So remember friends that in the original Exodus we read of a mixed multitude of foreigners
joining themselves to the Israelites as they make their way out of Egypt and begin their
journey toward the promised land.
Again we’re going to do a little flipping around, but let’s go back to Exodus 12 and
look at verse 38, Exodus chapter 12, verse 38, it says this.
This is after the people of, after the final plague, and the people are getting ready
to leave Egypt and cross the Red Sea.
It says this, a mixed multitude also went up with them and very much livestocked both
flocks and herds.
And the presence of a mixed multitude, in other words Gentiles, joining with the Israelites
in their Exodus raises the question, well can they become part of God’s covenant community?
Look down at verses 48 and 49, it says in verse 48 with regards to the Passover.
If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his
males be circumcised, then he may come near and keep it.
He shall be as a native of the land, but no uncircumcised person shall eat of it.
There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.
Even under the old covenant, outsiders were welcomed in, how much more so under the new
covenant in Christ.
And just as in the original Exodus, a mixed multitude of foreigners joined themselves
to Israel and Israel’s God, so in the new Exodus of the new covenant, sojourners from
the Gentile nations will join themselves to the kingdom and people of God.
And of course, friends, this too is ultimately fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ and in
the church in its new covenant expression.
Through faith in Christ, beloved, we are delivered, we are saved from bondage to the world, the
flesh and the devil, and in him we are joined to the true Israel of God, the church of Jesus
Christ.
This is true of us whether we happen to be Jewish or Gentile in terms of our ethnic or
racial background.
And this is a truth that the Apostle Paul, as an apostle to the Gentiles, reveled in.
One of the things that struck the early church so palpably was the truth that now Gentiles
are welcomed in on equal terms with Jews, and it is simply by faith in Christ.
It’s not that Gentiles had to be circumcised and become Jews first before they could become
Christians.
No.
Gentiles are welcomed in.
The uncircumcised are welcomed in too on equal terms with the circumcised.
But one of the aspects of this passage, verse 2, that troubles some Bible readers is this
reference to these foreigners being made slaves.
It says in verse 2, and the peoples will take them and bring them to their place.
The peoples of the nations will bring the people of God back to their land.
And the house of Israel will possess them in the Lord’s land as male and female slaves.
They will take captive those who were their captors and rule over those who oppress them.
Now the language of verse 3 shows that a great reversal is going to happen.
But what do we make of this language of male and female slaves here?
Well friends, I agree with Dr. E.J.
Young that we are to understand this language to be speaking of Gentiles being spiritually
subdued in the sense of being converted, being brought into submission to Christ’s Lordship
and being made willing servants in Christ’s Kingdom.
Dr. Young writes, this promise is being fulfilled when the Gentiles who oppose God are conquered
through the house of Israel, the Israel of God, the church, and are subdued by the Holy
Spirit and made heirs of the promises.
Through Christ the heathen are being spiritually subdued.
That is to say, through Christ working by means of his ministers and missionaries, they
are being subdued.
Only in the last great day will everything be fully subject to him.
Beloved, let us as a church, let us urge the nations and peoples of humanity to do what
verse 1 says, to attach themselves to the house of Jacob.
In other words, brothers and sisters, let us do our part in supporting the church’s
mission to call all peoples everywhere to repent and to believe the good news of Jesus
Christ.
You see, how do we do that?
One of the ways we do that is by supporting our missionaries.
We do so by praying, praying for God to bless our missionaries and to bless the spread of
the gospel and to bring the gospel to places that are still unreached.
We do so by praying.
We give so by giving.
We do so by giving to support missions.
And when called, we do so by going.
Let me ask you, dear listener, at this point, have you attached yourself to the house of
Jacob?
Have you attached yourself to the house of Jacob?
What do you mean, Pastor?
Well, have you attached yourself to Christ?
Jesus Christ, true God and true man, the Word made flesh, Emmanuel, the child born unto
us, the Son given unto us, Jesus Christ is the only Savior of sinners.
He is the all-sufficient Savior of sinners.
The Father sent his Son to be the Savior of sinners like me and like you, and he died
upon the cross to pay the penalty for sin, and he rose from the dead so that whoever
believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life.
Do you believe in him?
Do you trust in him for your salvation?
If you do, you have attached yourself to the God of Jacob, the true and living God, and
you have thus also attached yourself to the house of Jacob.
May God give you the grace to receive and rest upon Christ and Christ alone for your
salvation even this day.
And that leads me to my final point.
Consider finally, beloved, the rest and relief resulting from the New Exodus, the rest and
relief resulting from the New Exodus.
In verse 3, it says,
You will take up this taunt against the King of Babylon, and then begins a lengthy taunt
song in the form of a lament, how the oppressor has ceased, the insolent fury ceased.
Babylon represents worldly power.
Ultimately, Babylon represents and is a type of the Antichrist.
Babylon must be judged before the Redeemer would come.
As Dr. Young writes, when Isaiah wrote, the great might of Babylon had not made itself
fully manifest.
Assyria was at that day in the ascendancy, but Babylon would come, the agent of God in
bringing about the overthrow of the theocracy, the Israelite theocracy in other words.
But Babylon had been a proudly exulting foe, far greater even than Assyria.
She therefore must fall and fall completely.
Babylon must fall and fall completely.
Her overthrow would thus signalize that the way was fully open for the Redeemer to come
and for the promises of God to be fulfilled.
You see, the people would be exiled into Babylon.
God would use Babylon to judge his faithless people.
They would be refined and chastened through that exile experience.
But Babylon, an instrument in God’s hand for judgment, they had not done their work
as unto the Lord.
They had done it with cruelty.
And so God was going to judge Babylon.
And Babylon, ancient Babylon’s judgment was necessary before the Messiah could be sent.
That’s the point that Dr. Young is making.
And of course, God’s judgment and overthrow of Babylon would mean rest and relief for
God’s exiled people, just as the Exodus event of old had meant rest and relief for God’s
people from the yoke of Egyptian bondage.
Now all of this again is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ, for Christ alone can give
rest to our souls and relieve us from the legalistic burdens of trying to earn our salvation.
And so this ultimately points us not just to rest from exile and a return to the promised
land, not merely rest from physical slavery, but salvation rest in the Lord Jesus Christ.
As Jesus says, if you turn to Matthew 11, verses 28 to 30, we read these words.
The Lord Jesus says this, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden.
Those of you who labor and are heavy laden by the weight of your sin, by your guilty
conscience, come to me, Jesus says, and I will give you rest.
And then he says, take my yoke upon you.
The picturing a yoke that is put on an animal, a yoke of servitude, but it’s not a heavy
yoke.
It’s not a burdensome yoke.
It’s not a crushing yoke.
No, take my yoke upon you and learn from me.
For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Joshua was not the one who ultimately gave his people rest, though he brought them into
the promised land.
Moses certainly doesn’t give his people rest.
Christ gives us rest.
Dear ones, let us find our salvation rest in Jesus Christ and Christ alone.
In conclusion, my friends, our gracious God always keeps his promises.
His gifts and calling are irrevocable.
His word is truth.
His gospel is sure.
His faithfulness is steadfast.
His mercies are new every morning.
But in spite of the hostility and the raging of his enemies, his purposes will stand.
By the grace of God, may we as a church be aligned with the purposes of God.
May we pursue the mission of God.
May we display the love of God.
May we display the love of God both within our fellowship as we love one another as brothers
and sisters in Christ.
And may we display the love of God to those outside of Christ, those who desperately need
to know the love of Jesus.
And all of God’s people said, Amen.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you that in Christ we have a greater deliverance than even the
deliverance of the people from their enslavement to Pharaoh and the Egyptians.
We have a greater deliverance even than the deliverance you granted to your people after
the exile.
We have deliverance from the world, the flesh, and the devil in Christ.
We thank you, God, for delivering us, redeeming us, saving us, not because we deserve it,
not because we are worthy, but by your grace and your grace alone.
May we stand upon your grace.
And as you are a God who always keeps your promises to us, grant us the grace to keep
our promises to be faithful to you, to walk with you, and to be witnesses for Christ.
We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, Amen.
Let’s respond to what we’ve heard today by rising and we’ll sing as our closing Psalm,
Psalm 72B, Hail to the Lord’s Anointed, 72B.