Sunday 11 January 2026

Nollamara Church Of Christ Sermons.

Raw transcript of meeting:

Date Of Sermon: 11 January 2026

Speaker: Jamie Boland

Sermon Title: When The Warnings Come

Scripture Reading: Exodus 6:28-7:7

 The Bible reading this morning is from Exodus chapter six, and I'm going to start at verse 28 and read through to chapter seven, verse seven. Now, when the Lord spoke to Moses in Egypt, he said to him, I am Lord. Tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, everything I tell you, but Moses said to the Lord, since I speak with faltering lips, why would Pharaoh listen to me?

Then the Lord said to Moses, see, I have made you like God to Pharaoh and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. You have to say everything I command you and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the people. To let the Israelites go out of his country, but I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you.

Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment, I will bring up my divisions, my people, the Israelites and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against the Egypt. And bring the Israelites out of it. Moses and Aaron did, just as the Lord commanded them.

Moses was 80 years old and Aaron was 83 years when they spoke to Pharaoh.

Thank you, Leslie. So we're just continuing our short look at the Book of Exodus and the title of our message today is When the Warnings Come, let's Commit This Harm to our Lord. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to gather once again around your word. I think of those words we sang earlier, speaker Lord.

And fulfilling us all the purposes for your glory. And so far, we just wanna open our hearts to your word and your spirit this morning. In Jesus' gracious name. Amen. That was almost 40 years ago that the American Cancer Society launched a very powerful anti, uh, smoking campaign, and it was spearheaded by this man.

Do you know who this is? Gil Brenna? Yes. Now, this is actually still from the commercial, and for those who remember, Brenna was famous for his role as the king as I am, and the musical, the King and I, he actually won the Academy of Warfare best actor. He also ironically played Pharaoh in the film of the The 10 Commandments.

Brenna had been a very heavy smoker for decades. He, you know, he was constantly pictured with a cigarette in his hands, blowing smoke out his mouth. Excuse me. He was the marble man. Okay? And having been diagnosed with lung cancer, he knew that his time was short. He knew that my life is about to come to an end.

And this message that he, he filmed premiered only days after his very highly publicized death. So, in a sense, when you saw this, his was a voice speaking from the grave. And what he did is he looked directly into camera in a deep, and in a, you know, very deep throaty voice. He said, now that I'm gone, I tell you don't smoke.

Whatever you do, just don't smoke. Now, I remember seeing this as a teenager and it scared the hell outta me. I was, you know, I was frightened. This was, this was meant to be haunting. It was designed to confront us with the reality smoking kills. Okay? In the media back in the eighties, it was everywhere. The cricket theme, the mold man, you know, the media and film were portrayed that smoking is cool and glamorous, but the reality is it's deadly.

Yes. And his personal testimony from a celebrity speaking from beyond the grave spoke far louder than statistics alone could ever speak. And basically what happened in this public service announcement if we came face to face with a dead man, urging us not to repeat the mistake he made. Whatever you dot smoke, that was the warning.

Think of the slip slop slap campaign. Do you remember this? Yes. Okay. Slip on a shirt. Slop on sunscreen, and slap on hat slip, slope slap. Okay. It's very clever marketing. Most of us here can probably still sing the jingle after all the cheer. Yeah. It's easy to remember. Great to sing, but guess what? It's not enough to know the slogan.

It's not enough to be able to sing along with the tune after all these years. The purpose of slip, slop, slap was to do what? Was to make us aware of the dangers so that we actually do what it says we need to slip, slop, slap. Yeah, because if you don't, you can die. Now, I'm telling you, this is not to to be alarmist.

It's about understanding the dangers of life under the harsh Australian sun. We are called to hear the warning and to hear the warning. 'cause if we don't, if you don't listen to the warning and act, then something bad might happen. Okay? That's the very purpose of a warning. Okay? You see the commercials today?

We don't see, don't smoke. What we see is don't speed, don't drink and drive. Okay? It's called a public service announcement for a, for, for a reason. Do this and live. And our reading today, God goes to Moses or God tells Moses, go to Pharaoh and bring a warning stand before the most powerful leader in the ancient world and tell him that judgment is coming.

It's on its way. And yet, despite everything, all the signed and wonders that Pharaoh's gonna see, God tells Moses in advance that this guy's stubborn. He's not gonna listen. And so judgment, it comes and it comes in the form of these 10 plagues. Now this is a story we know from Sunday school. Okay. This is one of those stories we learn in Sunday school.

We know it well, but what I want us to do today is to take time and reflect. What might God be saying to me? What might God be saying to you as we consider all of this? You know, it's interesting. There's a, there's a belief today in a wider culture that God is love. You'll hear this out in the marketplace.

God is love and that's basically all he is. And in his love, he accepts everyone just the way they are. God would never exclude, God would never confront God, would never judge, and what we need to is free ourselves from this, you know, this ancient archaic belief that he could ever be angry with us and the things that we do.

God is God of grace, and grace means that there no, there's no consequences. That's the theology you'll find out there in the marketplace. You'll find it on tv, you'll see it on social media, and heaven forbid you, you'll actually see it in some churches. Yeah. Now consider these words from Neil Don Walsh.

Now, he's an American author. He writes on spirituality. He wrote a series of books called Conversations with God. And it's interesting, these books have sold millions of hobbies. So this guy is not a small little voice. He's a guy who's highly influential. He said this, he said, God is love and accept you as you are.

God expects nothing of you. God does not judge nothing makes God unhappy. You do not need to change anything or get better to be seen as perfect and beautiful in God's eyes. Now this is standard thought from those who will espouse, you know, the Oprah type spirituality. God loves you just the way you are, and you will only find peace when you learn to begin to accept yourself for who you truly are.

That's what you'll hear in the marketplace. Now, I saw this on social media just before Christmas. Let me read it in case you can't. The shepherd says, so if we're not broken, why did you come? And baby Jesus says to tell you that you're not broken. Now, do you hear what it's saying? It's saying that there is no danger, there is no need for any warning.

You are just fine. You know, just the way you are. You are not broken. There's nothing wrong with you. And can I tell you, this is coming from a pastora. Let me say this. Yes, God is love. We believe that. Yeah, God is love. Yes, God is forgiving and yes, God is a God of grace. He's all these things, and yet he's more, the Bible tells us that God is holy, but also tells us that in his compassion, he's slow to anger.

It doesn't tell us that he never get angry. It says he is slow to anger. That's his compassion. That is grace. And yes, he will find you where you are. He will hunt you down like that. Moosh sheep. He will hunt you down. He will look for you. He will search for you and he will find you where you are. But just like those Israelites in Egypt, he has so much more for you and he wants to rescue and take you into something far, far better.

Amen. Now, we heard in our reading today that God says to Moses. I will lay my hand on Egypt with mighty acts of judgment. That's not the hand of God you want upon you in your life. I love the hand of God at work in my life, but not like this. I will lay my hand on Egypt with mighty acts of judgment, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.

They will know that I am Yahweh God of the Hebrews when I stretch out my hand against them. This is what we hear immediately before God sends the 10 plagues. Now we can read popular authors saying God does not judge, but we need to take judgment seriously when we consider exactly who God is. Now, the plagues themselves, they stretch out from chapter seven to 12.

Now, I don't have time this morning to go through everything in detail. But the, the very heart of this passage is the question asked by Pharaoh in chapter five, verse two, and looked at this last week. Moses first went to Pharaoh and Pharaoh said, who is Yahweh that I should obey him? Who is this Yahweh that I should listen to him?

Who is he to tell me what to do? What claim does this Yahweh have on my life? What right does he have over me? Now, does this sound familiar? I think we've all reflected this attitude in our own lives at one point or another. Yeah. Be honest, tragically for Pharaoh, he's gonna find out exactly, you know, all too well who this Yahweh really is, and that's what's at the heart of, you know, what's going on with all these plagues.

It's answering this question, who is God? Who is this Yahweh? Is he a God who loves and accepts us just the way we are? Is he a God who expects nothing of us? Is he a God who doesn't need to judge because nothing makes him unhappy? So Moses comes to Pharaoh and he says, let my people go. This then leads to a cycle where when a plague calms, Pharaoh sees what's happening.

He sees all this devastation upon the land, upon his people. He relent and he says to Moses, Moses, I'm sorry Moses, please forgive me. You know the Israelites are free to go. Whatever you do, just take the plague away. That's what he does. But as soon as the plague is removed and relief comes, what happens?

Pharaoh changes his mind and he goes back on his word. Again, I think, you know, we're not that much different than Pharaoh how often when trouble comes in our own lives, we cry to God and we say, God, I am sorry God, forgive me. God, please take this away. And God in his mercy, he reaches down. He delivers us.

But just like Pharaoh, just like Pharaoh, as soon as things go back to the way they were, we forget about it. And we go back to what we were doing before. You know, back to that very thing God was putting his finger on in the first place, and I stand here before you, and I know for a fact that this is not just my experience, it's not being prophetic to say that there is no single person out here to whom this does not apply.

This is us. We've all got this little Pharaoh heart, God relent. But then Pharaoh's like, well, you know, I'm not gonna change. Yeah, why should I let these people go? We need these Hebrew slaves. They're the backbone of our economy. And what happens? The Bible says that he hides his heart. In fact, if Pharaoh likes the way things are, he likes the status quo.

He likes being this cruel tyrant who can exploit and enslave people, you know, for his own benefit. He likes it. He likes it so much. Why did he care? You know, when sin benefits him. He's getting something good out of this. He likes what sin brings, but what he doesn't like is the judgment that follows the same can be true of us.

Yeah. Yeah. We might not like where our sin likes, uh, leads us, but we like the sin. Okay. We rebuke it with one hand, pull it back with the other, and there's times in our lives where deep down we don't really want to change. We don't really want to change. We just don't want to experience the consequences of our actions.

We don't like the consequence, but we don't wanna do the hard work to change Francis chance at this lukewarm, people don't really want to be saved from the sin they want. They only will be saved from the penalty of their sin. Amen. But let that sink in.

Let's think for a moment about these plates. Okay? They come in sets of threes, and the first set of three then all turns to blood. Next, there's this plate of frogs. Then comes the, you know, the swarms of ly or gnats. And the second set of three, we have flies followed by disease to the livestock. And then you get this pledge of boils.

And then the final set of three week hail, horts of locusts, and then darkness covers the land for three whole days. And it all culminates in chapter 12 with the events that are pass, pass over the, the death of the firstborn. Now it's interesting because all the way back in chapter eight, eight, verse 19, and this is immediately after the third plague, Pharaoh's magicians, they're replicating the miracles of Moses and they get to this point with the third plague.

They've, they've duplicated plague one, plague two, but they can't repeat plague three. And they say, this is the finger of God. They can do stuff like Moses up until this point, and then they realize, Pharaoh, this is the finger of God. It only takes three PLAs for them to realize they are in way over their heads, and so they tell Pharaoh, Hey, Pharaoh, whatever you've got in mind, it just ain't gonna work.

It ain't gonna work. Pharaoh, you need to listen to us. If you're not gonna listen to Moses and Aaron, at least listen to us. You know us. You can trust us. Yeah, Pharaoh just just doesn't listen. He refuses to heed warning and his heart gets hard, and it's a hardness of heart that goes on for seven more plagues.

Do you get that? A hardness of heart that just goes on and on and on. That is sad. Don't let that be your life. Now, let me say this. God deals with sin. You know, judgment is never his first move. God just doesn't come and say, I'm, I'm sick of you. I'm just gonna judge. That's never his first move. And that's what we see here.

God brings a warning in the hope that it will lead to repentance. But the problem is Pharaoh was stubborn and he just won't listen. He ignores the warning and hardens his heart, and that's what we see in both chapters eight and nine. But then in chapter 10, we see something different. Pharaoh hardens his heart, but in chapter 10, God hardens Pharaoh's heart.

You don't want that. Here's the truth. We need to come to terms with when conviction is repeatedly rejected. When God is knocking on the door of your life and conviction is repeatedly rejected, God will confirm your choice. That's a reality if we repeatedly ignore what God tells us to do. And God won't stand in a way, and what he will do is he will hands over to our choices.

Here's the good news. God will never harden a soft heart. That's the good news. You can trust God. He is good. He will never harden a soft heart, but he will confirm a hard heart. He'll say, I'll leave you to it. This is your choice. Now you experience what you have chosen.

Now, I won't go through each of them individually, but one thing that's important to know is that in each of the plagues, it's an attack against one of the Egyptian deities. Now, for example, the first plague, the, the Nile turns blood. Now for the Egyptians, you know, for them in their thought, the Nile was, you know, understood to be the bloodstream of this God called osirus.

And just as water sustains life, they believe that a osirus, this God, while the Chief God osirus sustained the life of Egypt through the nail. Now, it's interesting. Claudia and I, we've driven through the Sahara Desert in Northern Sudan. It goes from Ethiopia through Southern Sudan, into Northern Sudan, all the way up to Egypt.

And as you drive through the Sahara Desert in Sudan, you know, you can see the life that the Nile brings you. You know, you, you're on the road, you're driving in, you can look across the desert, and you can see this tiny little strip of vegetation, this green that's running alongside the Nile. You don't actually see the water.

You see this patch of vegetation and you can see that's where the river is. Okay? That's where the river is. Why? Because water brings life. And for the Egyptians, you know, they're believing that this water, this water that service them, this is the bloodstream of a Cyrus bringing life to them. And so in Yahweh, in this first plague, he reaches down.

He attacks the Nile. What he's doing is attacking the life that it brings, and he's attacking, you know, he's striking against Osirus and he's telling the Egyptians a very strong message. He's saying to them, I am more powerful than the thing that you look to for life. Does it make sense? You look to this river for life, I'm more powerful than the thing that you think sustains you for life.

Moreover, if you take away that which gives life, then death naturally follows, then that's the warning here for them. They should be able to look at this and see. Life will be taken away and death will follow. And with the seventh and eighth plagues, we see hail and locusts. And Egyptians believed that the go set was the protector of the crops.

And so when Yahweh sends further hail and then lo locusts to, you know, wipe out the crops, what he's saying is that, you know, I'm striking against your, God said you think he's the one protecting you. You think he's protecting your halves and sustaining you through food. Let me strike against Tim and let me strike against your food supply.

And when the food run out, guess what? You die

the ninth plague. Darkness covers the land for three days. Now in Egyptian cosmology, Rahi was the sun God. He's the supreme God you will find in every single Egyptian temple. And so when Yahweh blacks out, the sun is striking against yah. You know, rah himself, you look to this rah, you think he's the number one God, let me show you my power over him.

In every single one of these plagues, God is demonstrating his superiority over and above the gods of Egypt. He's showing the Egyptians these things you look to sustain your life. They are wick and impotent. Before me, I am the living God, the creator of heaven and earth. Pharaoh, you asked who I am. Let me show you.

There's something else that's interesting here. And several of these plagues, what Yahweh does is actually turn the gods. They worship against them. We've got all these gods that they worship, these idols, these things they think will sustain their lives, and, and, and God uses them against them to punish them.

For example, there's this plague of frogs. They look to the frogs and they worshiped a frog as the God fertility. Okay? Fertility is the next phase of life. And God says, you wanna worship this thing as an idol, I'm going to use it against you. I'm going to use that very thing you worship, turn it against you and punish you with a thing that you think brings life.

Let's think about this for a moment. 'cause we can look at these people and we can say, well, we don't have idols if we don't worship idols. Let me ask you, what is an idol? What's an idol? Well, for them it was a frog. Ask yourself this. What is it that gives your life value? What is it that gives your life meaning?

What is it that gives your life hope? What do you put your trust into? Sustain your heart, because whatever that is, if it's not a living God, then it's an idol.

And we might say we're not like those superstitious action people. We don't worship idols. Listen to what John Kelvin said. He said this, he said that the human heart is an idol making factory. That's a very clever, clever graphic. You can see the factory inside the heart. What are the idols in your heart?

What are the things that sustain your life over and above God? What is the thing you look to to find refuge and comfort? Because if it's not God, then it is an idol. One of the biggest idols that is destroying lives in the modern West is pornography. People find a comfort, hope, release, safety escape in something that they feel is gonna sustain my life.

I can't live without it, and when life is hard, when I get this trigger, I go back to that which I feel sustain and uphold my life. That is an idol. Read this. Arms we're meant to find refuge in the Lord, not in the bottle, not in chemicals, not in porn, not even in material comforts.

Look around us, the society we live in. And when we first came back to Africa, Claudia and I were so shocked about how materialistic Perth had become. If you look around how many people put their hope and trust in property and possessions, material comforts, and the message our world tells us is that you can, you know, if you can just get more, if you can just have more, if you can have the latest iPhone, the biggest tv, if you can just have more than your life will be full and rich.

That's the message. And so many people today, they buy into this light only to find deeper and deeper emptiness. JD Rockefeller is one of the richest men in history. He once said, I have made many millions, but they have brought no happiness. Here's my point. When we worship the God of consumerism, it gets turned against us and we will come to realize that it never bring fulfillment that our souls so desperately craves

these Egyptians. They worship these idols, these God and God. God says, I'm gonna turn these things against you and used them to punish you. That's exactly what happens to us.

How many people you know lust for money and changes them? When you lust for money, it will change you. It will do something in you. I once said, someone say the Bible asked three questions about money. How did you get it? What are you doing with it, and what is it doing to you?

Money more. It'll change, but not for the good. Sad reality is whatever idols we make, whether it be money, sex, power, self worship, ultimately will only bring death and destruction into our lives. So here we have this situation, one by one, our Yahweh demonstrates his superiority over the gods of Egypt. And in the very final plague, he shows Pharaoh that he's not a God to be tri with.

Who is Yahweh? And Yahweh says, I'm not a God that you mess with. And I dunno if you've ever noticed the irony that in the last plague you've got a Pharaoh. The previous Pharaoh has ordered know the death of the all the male, you know, born he Hebrew babies. Okay, you kill my sons, now I'm gonna kill yours.

That's what happens with this final plague. They get a taste of their very own medicine. The judgment that's inflicted upon them is the same sin they visited upon someone else.

They get to feel that pain themselves. It's, it's not good. In chapter 12, we see the events of the Passover. It's a very interesting chapter. All these plagues are going on. Suddenly the, the text slows down a little and God starts to give very specific instructions to his people about how not to come under judgment.

He says, what I want you to do is I want you to take a, a 1-year-old lamb that's with a defect or blemish. Don't take one of those manje diseased ones. I don't want that. Take one that's without, you know, blame, without, uh, blemish. Sure. Or defect. And a twilight. You've gotta a slaughter the lamb. And God says, I want you to cook it with a bit of herbs and serve it with a side of unleavened bread.

And he tells these people, I want to sit down as a family. I want you to eat this altogether. And then they're also told to take the blood from the lamb and put it on the doorpost. God says, you know, put it on the top. You know, you know, put it on the sides. I want you to coat the doorpost with blood, and the angel of death will pass by.

Now we can look at this and think, well, you know, why is God asking them to do this? Why is he getting them to jump through all these soup? Understand they wouldn't have had the faintest idea as to what this was really all about. We in hindsight understand what it's about, but at the time they have no idea what this is really all about.

And they could have thought to themselves, what's the point of all this? Now, God knows where Hebrew, he knows where his people, he came to rescue us, not kill us. What are we gonna jump all these hoops? What do we need to smear blood everywhere? Have you ever killed an animal? We used to see this in cartoon During Ramadan.

They would tuck an animal, slice, its throat, blood, would congeal and be everywhere. And I can tell you it stinks. And the flies, now we're immune from this 'cause we've just got coals. But the Hebrew people, they've killed this lamb and they've got a smear this blood and the smell is there and the flies are there and they're probably thinking, God, what are we doing?

Do you see that they're called to obey, even though they didn't fully understand what this all means? Do you get that? God calls them to obey, even though they don't fully understand what this is all about. They're simply given a warning to heed, and God says, do it or die. That's the warning. Now, here's the interesting thing.

1500 years later, 1500 years later, John the Baptist, he comes along, he stands up in the desert, he sees Jesus coming, and he says, behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. It takes 1500 years for all these things that God makes them do to fully make sense. Okay, we're at a wonderful vantage point.

This side of the cross. We can look back, we can recognize, you know, this is all a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, his perfect sacrifice allowing, you know, God's judgment to pass over us. That's what we understand, that their very first Passover, they were called to ab obey something that couldn't possibly conceive that my friends is obedience.

God, I don't understand why, but I'll do it because I will obey. There's a great quote in the book, screw Tape Letters by CS Lewis. Now you've got this older demon screw tape. He's mentoring his young nephew, wormwood, understand their task. Their goal is to, you know, disrupt people, to lead them astray, to turn them away from God in his ways.

And Screw Tape says this to his young nephew, he says. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human no longer desiring, but still intending to do God's will looks upon a universe from which every trait of God seems to have vanished, asks why he's been forsaken, but still a base. You see what he sang?

He's saying that there's something powerful about people obeying God when it doesn't make sense. There is something so powerful about us. When we position our lives under God, we don't understand. We will obey that. Even the powers of hell. You know, he disarms them. That's what he's saying. We've got no more, you know, nothing left in the armory when someone says, I refuse to not obey God, even though I don't understand, I will obey.

Yeah. They've got no power. They've got no sway. Now, there may be times in our lives when we don't understand why God is telling us to do certain thing, but we're called to trust that God is good and that his warnings are there to protect us. Do you believe that? You know, when you're younger, we conceive of God.

He's his cosmic kill joy. He's out to ruin my fun. It's all about these rules. Don't do this. Don't do that. I wanna be free. I wanna sleep. Where do I wanna sleep? I wanna do this, I want to do that. And then we get older and wiser and we come to realize God's rules. God's laws are there to protect us. That's true freedom.

And so we've got this first Passover, the Israelites, I don't fully understand where God's asked 'em to cover the doorposts with blood of the lamb, but they are they, and this is the same faith that he's calling us to assist people today. And one last thought, think about the timing of these plagues.

Jewish tradition, the mishna, it's like a, uh, written collection of the oral tradition. It says that these events occurred over the period of about 12 months. So from the, the time of Moses encountering the burning bush to the events of the past over, let's say it's almost, uh, you know, the time period of a year.

And so understand this doesn't just happen overnight. There is this prolonged period in which God gave Pharaoh every opportunity to do the right thing, okay? He's got plenty of time to repent and turn from his ways. Can I tell you this is compassion of God. God is slow to anger, okay? He's angered by sin, but he is slow to anger.

And then now we can experience the same sort of thing in our lives. God is with us. He's patient, he's gracious. He slowed anger. But can I exhort you? Don't ever mistake God's patience for tolerance. Don't ever mistake God's patience for tolerance. If you're sitting here today and you know God's put his finger on something in your life and you know it's like he's been telling you over and over, but you keep on ignoring him, then what you're doing is presuming upon the goodness and the grace of God.

And when you do that, your heart will grow hard. You'll deceive yourself. You'll justify your actions. You'll think it's okay. Me and God we're buddies. You know God's clearly okay with this sin in my life. Let me say this as a warning to us all. Don't ever presume upon the goodness and grace of God. Don't ever do that.

There's one thing your story shows us is that we cannot take God's mercy for granted. And that we cannot presume upon his goodness and grace indefinitely. God invites us to know him. He invites us to walk with him, but we don't ever want familiarity to breathe contempt. Amen. Amen. God will never let sin go on check.

Not in my life. Not in your life. Let me close. You may have heard of this man, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We've got a few, our few of his books in our library. He was a German pastor. He stood up to the Nazis during World War ii, one pa one point. He was involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. And so he was arrested, put in prison.

And when it got to the stage where the Nazis, you know, they could see that the war was coming to an end and that the feet was inevitable. Hitler ordered that this guy be executed. You know, there was no way they're gonna let this young upstart, you know, you know, live on beyond the regime and so on. April 9th, 1945 is put to death at Bosberg concentration camp.

In his book, the Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer wrote, he said this, he said, cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance. It's baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, cheap. Grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace, without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate in our midst.

Right, costly grace. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in field. For the sake of it, a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy, which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye, which causes him to stumble.

It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. Such grace is costly because calls us to follow. And it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. Amen.

Amen. The call to follow Jesus is a call to obey. We're sitting here today, we've come to church. We're God's people. Is there something in your life that God is putting his finger on? Amen. Even after all these years, is there something that God is trying to get your attention? He's saying after all these years, you need to leave this behind.

Where's your heart today? What's your treasure?

What'd you bail with me in prayer?

So I say your head's about him. I'm just reminded of these words we heard from District Bonhoeffer. He asked that very difficult question. Do we want communion with God without confession? Do you know if we come in knowingly being told over and over again what God desires of us? We know it, and yet we ignore it.

You know, we think somehow, you know, it doesn't matter. God's okay with it. His passage that we've looked at today reminds us that it does matter. Yes, God is a loving God. Yes, he's a gracious God, but he's also a God who desires righteousness from those who know him just like you. To take some time now and bring some confession before our Lord, take time to soften your heart beforehand.

Father we, we thank you. We thank you that you're a good God. We thank you that you're a God who loves us so much that you bring us warnings. We thank you that you're holy and righteous, and that you are reminding us today that you're not to be taken lightly. Father, I pray that our hearts will be open and broken before you.

God, you are the living God and you are the the God who brings life, and we want you to be Lord of our lives. We want you to reign in us that we experience the freedom that you have for us,

Lord, at the beginning of this year, we just open our hearts to you. We commit our lives a fresh may. Jesus be exalted and glorified in us. It's in his precious name we pray. Amen.