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I'll tell you one piece that for myself that has sat with me for years now, years, is Psalm 51, verse 10, creating me a clean spirit, oh God, and renew a right, or creating me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me, and it sits with me, and it works on me, and sometimes it really convicts me, and sometimes it gives me great hope and great joy, because I know that my spirit is not always right, and my heart is not always clean, and I know that I'm also not the one that creates that clean heart within myself, and I'm not the one that gives myself that right spirit, and so that gives me great hope, and when I'm feeling or thinking, not super-Christianly, I go to that verse constantly, and it continues to work on me and in me, and it's so amazing that we have that from the Lord, and it seems just from the nods that everyone, or most of you, have experienced that, where you have a verse or a story from scripture that comes to mind, or it works on you, have you ever had a piece of scripture that works on you that you wish it wasn't? They knew these people were being tortured they had spent at least four days on those cattle cars crammed in there no real food Most of them had nothing to drink and they were expected to walk a mile a pill part of the way making it into this next Concentration camp Fridays the recurrent humiliation of medical inspection The hospital corridor in which we waited was unheated and a fault chill had settled into the walls Still we were forbidden even to wrap ourselves in our own arms But had to maintain our erect hands at sides position as we filed slowly past of Falnicks of green greening guards how there could have been any pleasure in the sight of these stick thin legs and hunger bloated stomachs I could not imagine Surely there is no more wretched sight than the human body unloved and uncared for Nor could I see the necessity for the complete undressing when we finally reached the examining room a doctor looked down each throat Another a dentist presumably at our teeth a third in between each finger and that was all we trooped again down the long cold corridor and picked up our X marked dresses at the door all these women every single week Had to just file through completely Make it completely vulnerable completely bear and these guards would just smile Smile I Love how Corey says I don't I don't understand how anyone could find pleasure in this and Yet she said stood strong helped her helped her sister the whole time This is another excerpt from here This is their actual barracks where they lived Barracks eight was in the quarantine camp compound next to us perhaps as a deliberate warning to newcomers newcomers were located the Punishment barracks from there all day long and often into the night came the sounds of hell itself They were not the sounds of anger or of any human emotion but of a cruelty altogether detached blows landing in regular rhythm Screens keeping pace we would stand in our ten deep ranks with our hands trembling at our sides longing to jam them against our ears to make the sounds stop It grew harder and harder even within these four walls there was too much misery too much seemingly pointless Suffering every day something else failed to make sense something else grew too heavy Every day the sun rose a little later the bite took longer to leave the air It will be better everyone assured everyone else when we move into the permanent barracks We'll have a blanket a piece a bed of our own The move to the permanent quarters came the second week in October so it's getting colder and colder as this time progresses We were marched ten abreast along the wine a wide-sinder avenue several times the column halted while numbers were read out Names were never used at Ravensbrook at last Betsy's in mine were called we stepped out of line with a dozen or so others and stared at the long Gray front of barracks 28 Betsy and I followed a prisoner guide through our door at the right because of the broken windows the vast room was in semi-toy light our noses told us first that the place was filthy Somewhere plumbing had backed up the bedding was soiled and rancid then our eyes adjusted to the gloom We saw that there were no individual beds at all but great square tears stacked three high and wedged side by side and End to end with only an occasional narrow aisle slicing through we followed our guide single file the aisle was not wide enough For two fighting back the claustrophobia of these platforms rising everywhere above us at last She pointed to a second tier in the center of a large block to reach it We had to stand on the bottom level haul ourselves up and then crawl across three other straw covered platforms to reach the one that we would share with How many the deck above us was too close to let us sit up? I'm not thanking the Lord for the fleas But it comes to it turns out that They would hold the Bible study every single night With a Bible that they miraculously smuggled in and uh And the only reason the guards would not go in that barracks to break up the Bible study was because of the fleas So God's hand truly was In every moment of this he was with them in their suffering and would provide Um for them in that suffering at every turn it it I highly recommend um As you study the world war two study the holocaust um have your kids or grandkids study it Bring them back to a book like this Because a lot of people use the holocaust as a reason to prove God's non-existence If God existed there wouldn't be such times as the holocaust but this This book shows how God's hand was still there still with them Still providing for them and still loving them. It was sticky with blood Malmourished No real Hydration Constantly exposed to the elements expected to do hard labor beaten whenever Force to do these humiliating medical checkup every single week I can't get worse Death seemed A release I can't be able to leave that So now we're going to jump to scripture we'll come back to this momentarily I just wanted to kind of lay the groundwork of what they were experiencing in this concentration camp So let's go to Second Samuel In the Old Testament it's after first Samuel After after judges after Ruth It's after the Pentateuch so you've got Deuteronomy at the end of the first five books Then go a couple more and you'll get to second Samuel chapter 11 If anyone has the page number of the Pew edition you can holler it out 263 Excellent thank you Okay, so the Bible The Bible Character or person that we're going to study today is David And bring him up with good reason we're going to read about David's Sin here so picking up in verse or in in chapter 11 in the spring of the year The time when the kings go out to battle David sent Joe out with his officers and all Israel with him They ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Reba but David remained at Jerusalem It happened late one afternoon when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the tin roof On the roof of the Kings house, excuse me, that he saw from the roof of woman bathing The woman was very beautiful David sent someone to inquire about the woman It was reported this is Beth Sheba daughter of alien the wife of Uriah the Hittite So David sent messengers to get her and she came to him and he lay with her Now she was purifying herself after her period Then she returned to her house the woman conceived and she sent and told David I am pregnant So David sent word to Joab sent me Uriah the Hittite and Joab sent Uriah and two David When Uriah came to him David asked how Joab and the people fared and how the war was going Then David said to Uriah go down to your house and wash your feet Uriah went out of the Kings house and there followed him a present from the king But Uriah slept at the entrance of the Kings house with all the servants of his lord and did not go down to his house When they told David Uriah did not go down to his house David said to Uriah You have just come from a journey. I cannot forgive him give me your forgiveness as I took his hand The most incredible thing happened from my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current Seem to pass from me to him while into my heart spring a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness Any more than our goodness that the world's healing hinges But on his when he tells us to love our enemies he gives Along with the command the love itself She had gone to hell An earthly hell And this man who created that hell part of that hell for her he stood before her saying oh it was a great message I heard that Jesus forgives my sin through your lips How was she supposed to forgive this man but notice It's not out of her power that she forgives is it It's It's out of Jesus it's out of The love of Christ the forgiveness that we have in Christ that she was able to extend forgiveness to that man And she was overcome with love for this man who had put her through hell and she could forgive him Truly forgive him Because she had that strength from Jesus So what that means for us In our own lives When we pray that prayer we pray it every single week probably a lot of us pray it at home daily Forgive us our trespasses as We Forgive those Who trespass against us It's not out of our own power But we are called to forgive I love how she brings it back to Jesus if Jesus already died For the person who has sinned against you if Jesus has forgiven those sins Certainly we can call on him to help us to forgive Because often when we hold on To that sin Against us We too are burdened And we hold on to it and we bear the weight of that sin And we have no release of that So As we go for As we think about The heroes of faith Whether it's strength or peace or mercy or forgiveness We can turn every single time to realize that our strength That our peace That any mercy we may have And forgiveness that we may give truly is sourced At the cross truly is sourced in Jesus Christ Because the hell that they endured The sin that we endure whether we committed or we are sinned against It was already dealt with On the cross it was already overcome Through Jesus Christ and we can take that Into our daily lives To live out our faith We don't have to be amazing heroes We don't have to become famous To live our faith Because when we are living out our faith It is known in the kingdom. Adam and Eve had everything down to the fact that they bore the image of God the idea of not having enough not being enough it wasn't even a question in their mind because they had never experienced lack they had never experienced anything outside of perfection they had never experienced anything outside of the completeness of God and then the devil comes that tricky serpent and whispers into Eve's ear and raises the question of enough in her life the temptation stirs in Eve's heart and she thinks maybe what she has isn't enough maybe there's more look with me please at chapter three beginning in verse six so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they so did leave together and made loincloths for themselves eating fruit seems pretty innocent it's not a huge deal right to eat a fruit why is that really a big deal after all it looked good it seemed like it would be good to Eve was it a big deal yes it was a big deal because God had expressly forbidden it he had expressly forbidden eating of that fruit we like to judge sin and rank it some sins are worse than others some sins not so bad we can joke about it a little bit but sin is sin sin is sin all sin and sin is not determined by how you or I feel about it sin is not determined by whether we want to say something is right or wrong the whole series of acceptable sins with the big question mark it begs the question what sin is acceptable and the answer is a resounding none no sin is acceptable absolutely zero sin is acceptable even if everyone else does it sin is sin sin is wrong and sin earns the full wrath of God the Father Eve sinned when she questioned the word of God and determined for herself what would be right and good she tried to blame the serpent but the guilt lies directly on her shoulders for her own sin and just like Eve just like Eve we sin out of envy Eve envied God his wisdom Eve envied God his authority and his sovereignty and so she determined for herself that what she had the word of God was not enough and she ate of the fruit just like Eve our envy says that we what we have been given by God is not enough whether it is a matter of a material thing that God has blessed us with we see others who have more and we look at our blessing and say it's not enough out of envy we see the spouse of another person and look at our own spouse and say what God has given me in this spouse is not enough we see others who are wiser than us more talented than us more skilled than us funnyer than us and we envy because we are not enough in our envy we delight in the downfall of others when another struggles we take delight when another when another has a mishap we find little glimpses of joy or humor our envy our envy ultimately comes down to the envy we have over our own lives, over our own morality, over our own decisions that we do not hold the authority that we do not hold the ultimate wisdom that we do not hold ultimate sovereignty and we envy God we envy God and we determine for ourselves what is right and what is wrong in our gospel reading today we have that period where pilot is bringing Jesus before the Jewish people and he has a custom to turn over one of the prisoners to the Jewish people to release him and let him go free and surely he's expecting that he'll let Jesus go because as it said he knew that Jesus had been handed over by the chief priests out of envy the chief priests envy Jesus they envied the power that he had they envied the fluence that he had and they sought his downfall they sought his demise we envy God Jesus stood before the crowd in a crown of thorns and they mocked him and called for his crucifixion do you envy God in that moment they beat him and flogged him stripping away pieces of skin do you envy God they marched him through the streets holding across that he could barely carry do you still envy God they nailed him to two pieces of wood do you envy God Jesus hung there on the cross struggling for breath while those around him crucified with him taunted and tormented him the soldiers at the foot of his cross teased him mocked him while his mother and his friends stood by weeping unable to do a thing do you envy God on that cross the entire wrath of the father was poured out so heavily the burden of the sin of this world of all time all places all people thoughts words and deeds the punishment poured out upon the sun so devastating that he called out my God my God why have you forsaken me and he gave up his spirit to death do you still envy God they removed the body and buried it in a tomb Jesus had died if that had been you or I or any person to ever walk this earth the story would end there it would be done and it would be deserved and just but God God is God he is not you or I God in the second person of the Trinity Jesus Christ walked this earth to live the life that you and I cannot live he walked this earth out of his love for you and I so that when he died experiencing the full punishment unjust punishment of the father he could do what neither you nor I could do and he rose victorious he conquered death he conquered the grave he conquered your sin he conquered my sin even the sin of our envy Jesus did for you and for I what we could never do for ourselves or for anyone else from the beginning of your life of faith when you were born through waters of baptism you were born free you were born into salvation you were born into eternal forgiveness and you were born once again in the image of God and as Paul writes in Galatians it is no longer I who live but it is Christ who lives in me and in Christ you come before the father not enough in yourself but you are in Christ and in Christ you are enough because you stand redeemed in Christ and this was planned from before the beginning in Ephesians chapter one Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit writes he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love he destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of his will to the to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the beloved in him we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us what you have my brothers and sisters is Christ there is no need to be in Christ you have forgiveness in Christ you have salvation in Christ you have life in Christ and what you have in Christ is enough and so the joy that you have in Christ is enough the peace that you have in Christ is enough the love that you have in Christ is enough and so I encourage you I encourage you to live live in Christ because not only is Christ enough Christ is everything And you open your Bibles, please, with me to the Book of Exodus, the 3rd chapter for our study today for using a Pue edition of Holy Scripture.

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