Jesus Fulfills All Things.

Like the beginning of you thinking about this, the beginning of you having questions and talking to God and communicating and allowing his scripture to speak to you and to transform your life. And so we want to help you read your Bible and not only read it, but fall in love with scripture, believing that God is speaking through every single verse.

So at our welcome table, we have a little resource sheet for this series specifically that has a little Bible reading plan. If you want to read along every single week in Matthew, we have a little suggested plan. If you want to memorize scripture, we always kind of have some simple things that anybody can read. If you're like, I want a little challenge, like I'm feeling like I need a little more challenge in my life, memorize a passage of scripture every week.

There's also some other things that will lead you to help you study the Sermon on the Mount. And then another shameless plug. We already mentioned it, but Lunch and Learn today. Our topic is going to be scripture. How and why should we read scripture?

If you've never been to a Lunch and Learn, they're just kind of one-off every single Sunday for the next couple of weeks. We meet right downstairs in the living room, our community space. We have beautiful homemade lunch prepared by Christy, who's also serving on slides today. So we love our food. Can we give it up for Christy? She does such a good job every week. If you've been down there, you've enjoyed the fruits of her labor.

So we're so thankful. We'll have free food happening downstairs and a little teaching and a conversation around why and how do we read scripture. So come make some friends. It'll be great.

We are going to be reading in Matthew chapter 5, starting in verse 17.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter nor the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of these the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven for i tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the pharisees and the teachers of the law you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:17-20

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your word that is alive and active. God, we thank you that you are still speaking to us today. God, we thank you that you know each and every one of us. You know what we came in here carrying. You know our worries. You know our stressors. You know our anxieties. You know the weight of what we're walking through.

And we thank you that you are here with us through the power of your Holy Spirit. And so I just ask God that for these next few moments, would you illuminate this text. God, as we put aside all other distractions and recognize what a rarity it is for us to just sit and hear from you for these next few moments. We just surrender and we just say, you have our attention and we invite you to speak.

I just invite all of you in your own way to just ask God to speak. If you want to hear from God today, would you just say, Holy Spirit, would you come. Would you speak. Would you begin to invite and just welcome God's presence. Ask him to, in a unique, powerful way, use this scripture to speak to you, to transform your heart.

So God, we thank you for the ways that you continue to speak and to pour out your spirit. We love you. We love your presence. We love your word. We thank you. Thank you. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Jesus fulfills all things

So this text is in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. As we read the Gospel of Matthew, you see in those first couple chapters that it's the genealogy of Jesus. And then we see Jesus is here. Jesus is born. Jesus is baptized. Jesus goes into the wilderness. He's tempted. And then he comes out. And the first thing that he does, the first sermon that is recorded that he's teaching is what we are reading in Matthew 5, 6, and 7.

As we study this, it's significant to recognize that Jesus is on a mountainside and he's gathering all the people that are coming from near and far to listen and to lean in, to hear his teachings. In a similar way that we all gather from different places today. And we're here to listen to the teaching of Jesus.

So there's certain passages. And in the next couple of weeks, we're going to cover some of them where it's talking about murder and it's talking about our anger and it's talking about lust and desires and the law and all of these things. And it's like, what do we do with this. How do we read this. How do we live this out.

But it's so important for us to lean in, to pay attention, because these were some of the first words that Jesus chose to speak to his disciples to say, this is how I want you to live. This is what I want you to know. He's telling them, he's making sure they know that he has not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law of the prophets.

And so we're going to talk about the law today. We're going to talk about what does that mean. Because we have to recognize when we open the Bible and we open scripture, that Jesus, when he's talking to the people around, most of them were coming from a first century Jewish culture. And so they would have had an understanding and the shared understanding of what is the law. Typically, that would have been referring to the Torah, the first five books of Moses, the law of Moses. It often also is referred to as the 10 commandments, as a piece of the law.

So there's different types of laws that we're going to talk about here. But before we go into that, our so what today. If you're taking notes, I want you to write down is that Jesus fulfills all things. When Jesus came, he came to fulfill all things. The law, all the prophecies. He came, he fulfilled it. It's finished.

And so now what do we do with that. We need to live in a way where we are letting Jesus fulfill us because that's what he came to do. Is to fulfill us and to fulfill everything. So what we're going to talk about today is how Jesus perfectly obeyed the law. He completed the sacrificial system that was in place. He fulfilled every prophetic promise. He makes it possible now for us to follow the law and to be righteous through faith in him.

So starting back with the law. So there's different types of laws that we see in the Bible. We see that there's different moral laws. Some of this would have been considered even the 10 commandments that we read in Exodus. We see that these are what would have been considered a type of moral laws. They're considered timeless and they reflect God's character and they were applicable to all people.

So we read about it in Exodus 20. It says:

And God spoke all these words. He said, I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before you. You shall not make for yourself an idol. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord, your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Honor your father and your mother so that you shall live a long life. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house.

Exodus 20:1-17

So Jesus gives the Israelites through Moses these 10 commandments and is saying, this is what it looks like to live right. This is what it looks like to live according to my character, to live just, to follow all of these things.

We also see in the Old Testament that there was a lot of ceremonial laws. So these were specific laws to the Old Testament covenant that then we're going to later see how Jesus came to fulfill them. But what is so interesting is that the very first time, even before the Ten Commandments, that we see some sort of a law or a rule given was actually all the way back in Genesis in the creation story. We read all the way back in Genesis when God said, thou shall not eat of the tree of knowledge to Adam and Eve.

This was the first law, the first command, the first instruction that he gave them. And what I think is so significant about this is that this is something that is not an external thing. Knowledge, but this is internal. The first thing that God is asking of his people is to say, do not go and look for knowledge from anyone else but me. Do not go anywhere else for instruction, for knowledge, except for me, because he is the one that knows all things. He is the one that created all things.

The first invitation was this. Now we see that that was broken. They did eat of that fruit. Sin enters the world. Therefore now we sin and we need a way to pay the price for our sins. And so that when we start to see these Old Testament practices come into place of animal sacrifices and going before the altar, we're going to get into a little bit more of that today.

But I want us to just remember that as we move throughout this, that the first thing that God was saying was, hey, don't go anywhere else for knowledge. Trust me with that.

And then we're going to see if you go back and you read through the Old Testament, we start to see that there's different covenants and laws that are given to Noah and then to Moses. The Ten Commandments are the most significant that then were followed. And then from there, it just gets complex with all the laws. Where you can find a law when you get to Leviticus and Deuteronomy, just about anything. It's all of these laws about this, about that. It'd be like if it were today, it'd be like how to tie your shoes in a holy manner, right. Like how to button your shirt in a holy way and brush your teeth in a holy manner. Like there was a law and a rule for everything.

It kept getting added and added and added and added. And you can look back and you're like, why did they keep doing that. Like it started simple with the 10 commandments where God's saying like, do not covet or honor your father and mother. And then now we have like a hundred little smaller laws of how to honor your mother and father. And it kept getting added and added and added.

And we see this, that clearly the people on their own were not able to live in right standing with God. They were not able to follow the Ten Commandments. And so they kept trying and adding all these smaller laws to say, well, maybe this, maybe this, maybe this, to the point where it's recorded that there was over 600 of these laws. By the time you get through the Torah and the first five books there, the law of Moses, you see 600 different laws that were given. That is a lot of rules to keep. I mean, first of all, how do you even learn all of those rules, let alone keep them. This was an impossible task.

Jesus fulfilled the law

And so what we see is that when Jesus came, Jesus fulfilled every single law. How did he do it. Well, first, he came and through his perfect obedience, he lived a sinless life, fully obeying God's commandments. We read again in verse 17, where Jesus is saying that he came to fulfill the law. And Hebrews 4:15 says:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are yet he did not sin.

Hebrews 4:15

Jesus fulfilled the law by perfectly obeying it. He did what was impossible to man. What is impossible to us on our own without the blood of Jesus, he did it. He lived it. But what's so unique about Jesus, as we talk about us following him and submitting to him as Lord of our life, is that he did come in flesh and he did experience pain. He experienced hunger. He experienced the human things that we experience every single day.

And so he's not far off saying, look at me, perfect, and I also never experienced pain. But he experienced it all yet. He did not sin yet. He fulfilled the law through his perfect obedience. He lived the life that we could not live. And because of this, now we can be made new and holy and righteous because of Jesus.

Romans 5:19 says:

For just as through the disobedience of the one man, referring to Adam, the many were made sinners. So also through the obedience of one man, Jesus, the many will be made righteous.

Romans 5:19

We can be made righteous through faith in Jesus because of the obedience of Jesus. The next thing I want to talk about is how Jesus fulfilled the law by fulfilling the sacrificial system. So the law required a sacrifice for sin. Leviticus 17:11 says:

For the life of a creature is in the blood and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourself on the altar. It is in the blood that makes atonement for one's life.

Leviticus 17:11

So the law required sacrifice to atone for sin, but these sacrifices were temporary and they couldn't fully deal with the sin. And that's why we see so much in the Old Testament these stories of them building altars and then bringing the animals to sacrifice. It was every single time you sinned, you'd have to go and you'd have to pay a price and you'd have to make atonement for your sin.

So again, what we see here though, is that the law continued to point to the need for a perfect sacrifice that would permanently deal with sin, that would permanently take it away. And Jesus was that ultimate sacrifice. Jesus fulfilled the sacrificial system.

Hebrews 10:10 says:

And by that will we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.

Hebrews 10:10

Romans 3:25 said:

God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith.

Romans 3:25

Jesus was referred to in John as the perfect lamb who takes away the sin of the world. So if you ever wondered, like, is there more to Jesus' death on the cross. And why did he die. And why do we talk so much about his blood that was shed. It's because in the Old Testament, the Old Covenant was that every time you sinned, blood had to be shed. You would bring an animal, you would bring a sacrifice, and you would shed that blood to pay the price for your sins.

And so when Jesus came as the perfect lamb, he said, it is finished. No more sacrifice is needed. Now you can come to me, you can confess your sin, my blood covers it. Period. It's done. Nothing else is needed. This is incredibly good news for us.

Think about the freedom we have simply in the time that we have of not constantly going to find animals to sacrifice. Like, think about that. Yeah, we still can be like, oh, shoot, I got to take time to confess my sins today. We got it easy. We don't have to go and search the streets and we don't have to go and literally raise animals so that we can sacrifice them to pay the price for our sins. But we can come every single time that we sin and we can confess and we can repent and we can say, plead the blood of Jesus to come and cover us and cleanse us again. We got it easy. We can live fulfilled because Jesus fulfilled and he was the ultimate sacrifice, the final sacrifice that was made.

Next, we see that Jesus fulfilled the prophets' predictions about the Messiah. Every promise, every prophecy that was made, Jesus fulfilled. The Old Testament is filled with prophecies foretold about the coming Messiah. Some of the popular ones that we hear a lot around Christmas time:

For to us, a child is born. To us, a son is given. And the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6

Micah 5:2 says:

But you, Bethlehem, Ephrath, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me, one who will be ruler over Israel whose origins are from old from ancient times.

Micah 5:2

He was born in Bethlehem. He was the promised one. Jesus' life, death and resurrection fulfilled the prophecies.

Luke 24:44, Jesus is talking again and he says:

This is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms.

Luke 24:44

And Jesus is affirming this in Matthew, in the passage that we started with, where he's saying, I've come, I'm here, I'm fulfilling it. It's all done. Every single prophecy will be fulfilled. There are over 500 different prophecies that Jesus fulfilled. And some people can go and point to even more. This is no small thing for us to recognize. And it's nothing that any human person could ever do. Like there's no way that he could ever do this on his own. You don't get to plan where you are born. You don't get to decide that. And every little thing points to him being the promised one.

And ultimately, this was all done to make it possible for us to follow him, to let Jesus fulfill us so that we can live a life that is righteous and holy and pure and with him, united, one with Jesus. Jesus fulfilled the law by making it possible for us to follow it. We see that later in Matthew chapter 5, Jesus is going to continue to emphasize the true purpose of the law. That it's not just about external behavior but it's about a transformed heart. It's about us trusting only God. Only Jesus. Only his Holy Spirit to truly transform us.

And we see this going back to the first instruction that he gave to people where he's saying don't do this one thing. And that one thing was eat from any other tree of knowledge. Come to me.

We're going to read this in Matthew 5 verses 21. Jesus teaches this command where he starts to talk about do not murder and what he gets into in this passage is it's less about the act of murder which is still bad. That does not negate like that is bad. But he's talking more about the heart. Where he's going to go on to say like even if you hate someone you might as well have done the thing. That's crazy. That's a little extreme. But he's making these extreme notions to say like it's your heart. It's internal. This is what I'm after.

So we lived in this old covenant living until Jesus comes. And even this was predicted or prophesied in Jeremiah 31:33, where we read for the first time of the new covenant. Where God is speaking to Jeremiah and Jeremiah speaking to the people and saying:

This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel. After that time declares the Lord, I will put my law in their minds and right on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people.

Jeremiah 31:33

This was the good news of saying it's no longer going to be about following these external rules, but it is about your heart. It is about your heart being transformed. So in the old covenant, we see follow the law perfectly. And if not, bring an animal to sacrifice.

And now the new covenant, Jesus comes and he's our perfect sacrifice. And now he's saying, the law is going to be in your minds. Like, I'm going to give you the instructions. I'm going to give it to you. And I'm going to transform your heart. I will write this on your heart. I will be your God. You will be my people.

This is the invitation that we get to live in as a part of the new covenant believers. Is that we get to say, Jesus, I receive you as king. I submit to you as Lord. Thank you for your perfect sacrifice that you made for me. Thank you for covering my sins. I choose to follow you. And now he comes and he transforms our hearts.

Jesus' death and resurrection empowers us to follow the law. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus gives us the power of the Holy Spirit to live now according to his will. Romans 8:3-4 says:

What the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

Romans 8:3-4

What it's saying here in Romans is talking about that of the law. They tried so hard to just be like, well, if we just add one more rule, maybe if we give it a little more detail, then we'll stop sinning. They could not live righteously. They could not live fully surrendered to God and worshiping and honoring and holy and pure before him. They couldn't do it.

And so what Romans is saying here is what the law was weakened. It was weakened. What the law was powerless to do, what it could never do, Jesus came and did. He fulfilled the requirement of the perfect sacrifice so we can live holy and righteous and pure. And we now, through the Spirit, we can continue to live that out.

Why laws at all

So why laws, though, to begin with. Why laws. I asked ChatGPT why we have law. Here's what it said. Laws and regulations are essential for maintaining order, protecting rights, and ensuring fairness in society, providing a framework for peaceful coexistence and preventing chaos. That sounds really nice, right. Peaceful coexistence, world peace, no chaos. We all just live in harmony. Like that's what the laws are supposed to do.

And our laws totally do that today, right. Absolutely not. The law on its own cannot do that. But in its purest form, the law, even the laws that God was given, was to protect, was to bring peace, was to do what ChatGPT is kind of saying.

But here's how I want us to think about this, right. Is that sometimes we have to be reminded that the law is good and the law that we now have is to follow the way of Jesus and to live according to his standards. And it's no longer this list of these rules, but it's in alignment with the Holy Spirit and following what his word says.

I was going on a walk with my three-year-old niece the other night. And as we're getting to the corner, I grab her hand and I switch sides so she's now on the inside of the sidewalk as we're going by the busy roads. And she's three, so of course she says, why you do that. Why you do that. And I said, oh, I want to keep you safe from the cars that might come by. And she grabs my hand and says, okay.

No, it's not always that simple with three-year-olds, right. Like they don't always just go, okay. But there was something happening there where I was creating this rule to protect her in case some car comes veering off, which probably wasn't going to happen, but you never know. And she followed and she held my hand and she trusted me. Like there was a reason that I quick switched sides and I moved her to the inside as we walked along the streets.

You see, when we follow laws and rules, it's not just protecting us, but it's about protecting other people as well. And I want you to think about it like this. Every single day, we are all following laws and rules. And so sometimes when we come to following Jesus, we can be like, well, it's just about, you know, it's not about religion. It's about relationship. And yes, it's about relationship with Jesus. Relationship with Jesus makes way. And then as even we were talking about last week, when Jesus gives us this identity and says, like, you are the salt of the world, live as salt of the world, there is an expectation then for us to live as transformed people.

When Jesus says, I've come and I've made you righteous and holy and pure, then we do have an invitation to live that way. And the Sermon on the Mount is laying that out where Jesus is saying, live this way, live this way, live this way.

Why should we follow this. Why should we live this way. Think about it. When you drove here today, hopefully you stopped at every stop sign. Hopefully you didn't run any red lights or yellow lights either, but you stopped and you followed the rules of the road.

Now, when you stop at that stop sign, not only are you protecting yourself from the other cars that are coming in the intersection, but you're protecting them. If you were to just go through, we all know the million things that could happen.

When we are following the ways of Jesus, it's not just good for us. But it's good for the people around us. When we're following the law that he's laid before us, when we're submitting to his word and his Holy Spirit, it's not just to protect us, but it's to protect all the people around us. It's not just to bring peace and safety for us, but the people around us.

Now we're driving and we're going through those stop signs and those stoplights because we have places to go. But God also has a plan for every single person that we encounter every single day. Now what happens if we all stop following the rules of the road. We start crashing. We start running into things. Chaos happens. People get hurt. People die. It's chaotic. It's no longer safe. We're no longer protected.

But when we follow, we can all continue to get to where we need to go and to keep each other safe and to bring the peace that Jesus truly desires to this world. Jesus gives us a new heart. A new life. A new way to live. And he says will you submit to my spirit. Will you follow my word. Will you follow my ways.

At the end of Matthew's gospel Jesus says:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and foremost commandment. The second is like this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Upon these two commandments hang the whole law and prophets.

Matthew 22:37-40

Whoa. It's getting real simple. We went from like 600 things to Jesus is saying like, hey, hear this. Love the Lord, your God with all your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself. It comes down to the internal of saying, will you receive my love. Will you pour your love on me. Will you live according to that. And will you love your neighbor as yourself.

God's heart was for humanity. Jesus' heart was to come and to rescue and restore humanity. And now he's empowering us as we follow him to say, will you continue to rescue and to restore humanity. Will you continue to live according to my law, not just for the peace of yourself, but for the peace of humanity, because I have something greater for them.

Living by the Spirit

So how do we live like this. How do we do this. Galatians 5:16 says:

So I say, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

Galatians 5:16

Ezekiel 36:26-27 says:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Ezekiel 36:26-27

When we come before the Lord fully surrendered and we say, here, take it, he comes and he restores us and he gives us a new heart. He puts his law then on our hearts. And it is through the power of his Holy Spirit that we now get to walk in his ways.

And when we walk in his ways we can trust that it is good. It is righteous. Not only for us but for the people around us. Jesus made way for us to be righteous through faith. It is through faith in Jesus alone that makes us righteous because of his death and resurrection and the price that he paid on the cross.

We on our own, we cannot perfectly obey the law. Humanity tried and it couldn't happen. We cannot complete the sacrificial system. Only Jesus could do that. We cannot fulfill the promises. Only Jesus can do that. And Jesus did that for us. And now we have an invitation to receive it and to let him fulfill us completely and to live from that overflow.

David's prayer

Today, I was reading in Psalm 16 and I wanted to read this to us because I think that this is such a beautiful prayer. A psalm of David. Who also was someone that was trying to live according to the law. Someone that was trying to be righteous and to be holy. And if you know the story of David, you know he was not always righteous and pure and holy. And he had to keep coming back to God and confessing his sins. And he had to keep repenting. And he had to keep turning back towards God over and over again.

But he says this:

Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge. I said to the Lord, You are my Lord. Apart from you, I have no good thing. As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight. The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods but i will not pour out their libations of blood or take up their names on my lips. Lord you have assigned me my portion and my cup. You have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Surely i have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the lord who counsels me even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the lord always before me because he is at my right hand. I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. My body also will rest secure because you will not abandon me to the grave nor will you let your holy one see decay. You have made known to me the path of life. You will fill me with joy in your presence with eternal pleasure at your right hand.

Psalm 16:1-11

We are reminded in this psalm that God is our safe place. We're reminded in this. And you see this. David. Someone that walks so closely with God. Of even reminding himself like God knows best. He's saying here like the boundaries before me are pleasant.

Sometimes we can look and we're like, it can be hard to live fully surrendered and to follow the scriptures and to live in accordance to what God is asking us to do. To live holy. To live set apart. We can look at it and say, that's too hard. And that might not feel good in the moment, but he's saying these boundaries you've placed. Like they're good. They're to protect me. To keep me safe.

God gives us counsel and wisdom and instructs us today through his Holy Spirit. And this reminder that when we follow his ways, like we will not be shaken. Now it might feel that way from time to time on this side of eternity. But in heaven, like we know the promised hope that we have in Jesus. That through his death and resurrection he made way for us to spend eternity with him where we will not be shaken. Our bodies will rest secure and we will be filled with his presence.

Closing invitation

I'm going to invite Sean to come as we get ready to close. As we think about what does it look like for us to let Jesus fulfill us. I think we first have to think about what are we letting fill us. And that can start with who are we submitting to or what law are we currently following.

There were moral laws. There were ceremonial laws. And I think if we're not careful, even as we set out to follow Jesus, sometimes we can fall into this. Where we just want to be morally good, but not live fully surrendered. Or we just want to partake in some of the ceremonial things. Of maybe it's occasionally going to church. Or I'll say a prayer before a meal. Which are all good things. But with that we can do that yet still not fully follow and surrender to Jesus.

But the law that God gave all the way back in the Old Testament was to reveal his character, his goodness, his standards, his expectations. And they were all things with the intent to help us live at peace with one another. To help us not harm one another. To help us see the kingdom that he intended to bring and then brought through Jesus and is bringing through us alive and present. That's what the law was meant to do if it's followed.

And now because of Jesus, like we can follow it and we can live according to his kingdom. But in what ways are we still setting our own laws and our own rules. In what ways are we more focused on the moral things than we are on living fully surrendered to Jesus. What are we trying to protect. What are we trying to control. What are we trying to maintain.

Today we have an invitation to rather than trying to submit to other things and control other things, to submit fully to Jesus. To let him rule. And to set our attention to him.

In the Psalms that I read in verse 8, David says, I have set the Lord always before me because he is at my right hand. I love just the intentionality of the wording there. Of he's saying, I have set. See, when we fully live surrender to Jesus, there is something proactive that has to take place. Because there's all sorts of laws and rules and ways that we can follow in life. There's all different things that we can set our attention to.

But in the same way that we set an alarm before we go to bed, we need to continue to set our attention to Jesus. To let him rule. To let his blood be the new covenant. To let his sacrifice be enough. He says:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Ezekiel 36:26-27

And by that will we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all. I want to invite you to stand today. And I'm going to invite the worship team to come up. And we're going to close with one of the songs that we sang earlier. It talks about the blood of Jesus.

Because I think even as we talk about this and we talk about the law, that for some of us you might still be in that place where you're like, I don't know if I feel free. I don't know if I feel like I can just live fully surrendered to Jesus. And so maybe you're singing this in that kind of prophetic way and believing and it's a prayer of saying God like will you come cleanse me today. Will you come give me that new heart. Will you transform my life.

But I want us to sing this recognizing that we have been given a new heart. And because of the blood of Jesus we can now live by the spirit. That we are now instructed and comforted and healed and made whole. Not by our sacrifices. Not by our striving. But by our surrender and letting Jesus fulfill us.

And so I want to pray for us as we enter this space and just invite you to take the next few minutes to talk to Jesus. If you're here and you need to just pray and say, God, like, yeah, will you come. And will you transform my heart. Maybe you still are in that process of surrendering your life to Jesus fully. And you're like, I don't know how to follow your ways. Would you say, Holy Spirit, come fill me today. Guide me today.

If you're in this place and you're like, Jesus, I need help surrendering. Ask him to do that. And recognize that it is only by the blood of Jesus that we can be righteous and holy and pure. Nothing else.

And so God, we thank you for that today. We thank you that you continue to pour your spirit out. We thank you that you continue to cover us. We thank you that all of these things that you have set before us. It's for our good and for your glory. That you have a way for us to live that we can only begin to imagine.

And so as we continue to follow you and submit to no other ways and no other rules other than you. And give you our hearts. The most intimate center part of our beings. Would you just continue to give us more and more of your presence. Awareness of your presence. Awareness of your nearness. So we just welcome your presence in this place to heal. To restore. To do what only you can do, Jesus.