Wrong & Right

Good morning. Welcome to Shepherd’s Gate. My name is Tim. I get the privilege of being the lead pastor. So glad to see you all this morning. Thanks to those of you that are streaming in online. if you missed the beginning of the service, we have kind of reversed our order. If you’re from here, we’re going to be doing our worship set actually at the end of our service today. but if you are a guest, we just want to warmly welcome you as we’re going through the book of Genesis. And today’s a big day. Today’s a very important day. Did you know that? Yes. Do you know what today is the significance of today? It is Groundhog’s Day. How many of you are having a groundhog’s Day party with your family?

After the service today. I mean, some people live and die by that little furry creature, don’t they? it’s also a big day, because, believe it or not, this is the 50th sermon you’re going to hear today in our Genesis series, 50 Sermons on Genesis. Can we give God praise for that? And the third reason is this is actually the last time that we will have what we’ve been calling PG 13. So this is a PG 13 message. And so parents, if you have kids, this is the final warning. If you want them in here that’s great. But we just want you to know that what we’re going to talk today is on an adult level.

And so some of you I know you’re excited because it’s been intense. Whenever we have a PG 13 sermon. Amen. And some of you, you come because you’re like, there’s no way they’re going to say that or read that in church. And then we do and you go, wow, I can’t believe that they read that and said that in church that’s going to happen again today. Just so you know, the best way to stay informed is actually just follow us along on our app. If you don’t have our app downloaded, if you don’t have a smartphone, go on our website. The reading plans there, the dig deeper questions, and of course, questions for you to interact with your kids at an age appropriate level.

So today we’re going to take a little bit of a different focus because if you have been with us for the last three weeks, you know that the last three weeks we’ve been focused more on men than we have women. Is that fair to say, men, have you been feeling the heat? And, you know, here at Shepherds Gate, we don’t call men out.

We call you up. So even week one, we actually had you physically stand up and just said, hey, commit to being the spiritual leader of your home. You might remember week two. We talked about the difference between the terrible dad and the terrific dad. And then last week, Holy smokes, was that a text to get through, was it not?

I was so glad that I was at a conference the week before in sunny San Diego, and Pastor Ben had to deliver last week’s sermon. I think he did a fantastic job. I don’t know how you felt about how you did it by. I said after preaching last week’s sermon. Ben, you can preach on anything from here on out. I mean that that was not an easy text, but again, more focused on the men. Well, good news today because the focus is going to shift to the women. And all the men in the room said, Amen. And here’s the beautiful part.

When you go through a book of the Bible, sentence by sentence, word by word, we just allow God to speak to us. And because the text takes us there today, that’s where we’re going at a church as we’re going as a church. So let’s get into it. Genesis 39 verse one says, Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt.  Potiphar, remember that name is an Egyptian. Remember that who was one of Pharaoh’s officials. So this guy’s in a place of leadership. He’s the captain of the guard. And he bought Joseph from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there. So two weeks ago, we learned about Joseph. We learned that he’s really going to be our central figure from for pretty much all of Genesis part five, except for last week. Last week there was a focus on Judah, but from here on out, it will be strategically and purposely, on Joseph. And so he’s in a family. He has brothers. He’s the second to last child. His dad loves him the most. He buys them this coat of many colors. His brothers hate them and despise them. So they come up with an idea.

Thanks be to God to not kill them. Instead, they decide to sell them. And so now, that his captors, his initial Ishmaelites, have gotten him to Egypt. And so now he’s getting sold again. So this is the second time he’s getting sold. He’s still a slave. Here’s the good news is that God was with Joseph. God knew the difficulty that he was facing.

He knew the challenges that that were going to be presented in his life. But yet he never lost sight of who God is and how God was working in and through him. And because God was with Joseph, he prospered. And so he’s living in the house of the person that bought him, the Egyptian master. And when his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant.So much so that Potter for put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. Isn’t that interesting that you can be in a situation that you think is overwhelming, and yet somehow, if you remain true to the one true God and you live your life in view of who he is, not in the circumstances around you, somehow God can still work in and through you.

And so it goes on to say, from the time you put him in charge of the household in all that he owned, the Lord blessed the household of the Egyptian because of who and why was he blessing Joseph? Because Joseph was connected to God. Isn’t that interesting? Do you find that fascinating that God would work through Joseph to bless the slave owner? Potter, for the blessing of the Lord was on everything. Potter for had both in the house and with his business in the field. So Potiphar got to a point of trust with Joseph because of his character, because of the way that he was living his life, that he left everything he had in Joseph’s care. And with Joseph in charge of everything, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.

How many would love a lifestyle like this? Where you have a personal servant, you have someone that manages everything in your household, your family finances, the cleaning of your house, your children, the only thing at the end of the day that you have to stress about is where you’re going to eat, or what you’re going to eat for your next meal. Who has to sign up for that lifestyle? Here’s what’s interesting when you look at just these first few verses. And we’ve seen this pattern before in Genesis, this isn’t the first time that we’ve seen someone who doesn’t follow God. Someone who doesn’t know God sees someone who does follow God and actually identifies that there’s something different about this person, but yet it doesn’t believe. It doesn’t lead to them actually believing in God. Isn’t that interesting? Have you ever experienced this in your life? You’ll have others say, wow, you seem to be such a peaceful person, or you seem to have such a positive outlook on life, or there’s just something different about you and you say, yeah, it’s because God has saved my soul and you did it through Jesus Christ, who he hung on a cross and he forgave me of my sins.

And so now I view my life, and that in view of what it is that God has done for me and through me and in me because of Jesus Christ, and people look at you and go, oh, that’s nice. And what is it? Often times is the hang up for people that don’t want to surrender to God. What are the hang ups? Pride is one. What’s the second one? And it’s kind of a pattern, especially in our society. It’s money. Unsuccessful. My family’s healthy. I have my house. I have my cars. I have my vacations. I have my bank account. Everything’s going well. I’ve worked really hard and I’ve done all this on my own. They don’t recognize that God was part of any of it.

Why do I need God? Why would I go to church? Why would I serve others? Sure, there might be a charity in the community. Okay, I’ll write a check to the homeless, or I’ll go over here and, you know, donate to the food bank. But what? You know, this is helping fellow mankind. Why would I ever need God? Which is interesting when you think about Jesus and his teachings and how many times he talked about money in the view of learning those who were wealthy to not get caught up in their wealth, because he knew that that mindset would lead to pushing God away, or thinking that you didn’t need God. Here’s the second thing you can get.

You can glean from this passage. God can still bless you even when your circumstances are beyond your control. Here, let me say it again God can still bless you even when your circumstances are beyond your control. He’s a slave. He’s been sold. This guy owns him and yet he didn’t self. Whoa. He didn’t go into some situation where, oh, poor is me. And yes, this is my lot in life. And so I’ll just give up living somehow Joseph figured out a way to still have meaning and purpose in his life. That little by little, day by day, that he would show character, that he would show traits of honesty, that he would win the favor of his owner, Potiphar. And in that process, Potiphar would then help him and promote him within his own household.

Now this is really cool because up to this point, the only thing we know about Joseph is that he’s the second youngest kid and he gets this coat of many colors, and he’s now been transported a very long way away from his family to Egypt. This is really cool. You ready for this? The Bible tells us that Joseph was well-built and handsome, so if he had something else going for him, he’s very good looking. And apparently he hits the gym every single morning. And I said to my wife, do you refer to me as well-built and handsome? She did the same thing you did. She’s she just laughed. And I said, I will take that as a yes.

Here’s the difficulty. When you’re a good looking man and you go to the gym and work your biceps. After a while, his master’s wife, Potiphar’s wife, took notice of Joseph and said, come to bed with me. Did she want Joseph to go pray with her? Read a book, give her a back rub. At least start in there right. Here she is pursuing this young, good looking guy. Now, think of it this way. If Hollywood was writing the script to this story, what would be the next scene? Think of the shows that you watch on Hulu and Netflix and Amazon Prime. The handsome, well-built guy is going where? Straight to the bedroom. I’m so glad that God’s the writer of scripture because this is what it says happened. Joseph refused. He refused. Then he goes on to have a little conversation with Potiphar’s wife, with me in charge. He told her, my master does not concern himself with anything in this household. Everything he owns, he’s entrusted to my care. Look at the trust that I’ve earned from them. No one is greater in this house than I am.

I mean, he’s made me the lead servant, and I get to be the one that manages all the other servants in the household. My master has withheld nothing from me except you. He has never given me permission to sleep with you. And oh, by the way, listen to what he says. You are his wife and can’t you? For God, you came together in a ceremony eyeball to eyeball. And you, you actually coveted together and committed to being in a lifelong, monogamous relationship with one another. In case you forgot about it for his wife. How could I do such a wicked thing? And sin against who? He always goes back to God as his ultimate and final authority. The fear of God, the fear of not wanting to do something that would jeopardize his relationship with his creator. Now, you think this would be enough? You think she would? It came to her senses. She’s got plenty of other servants. I’m sure he wasn’t the only good looking one that hit the gym out of their entire vast estate, and fortune. But what do people do that are caught in sin? Or when people are told no, they want more?

And though she spoke to Joseph, and day after day she’s pursuing him, she’s seeking him out every single day. He refused to go to bed with her or even be with her. Did you catch that? I love this, this is such an important point here in this one verse. See here at Shepherds Gate. Some of you know this. Many of you that are new probably don’t know this. We actually have a very strict policy when it comes to males and females. On our staff. It’s called the male female alone policy. And we don’t allow any of our staff members of the opposite sex to ever be together. They’re not allowed to go out to lunch together. You can’t be on a plane together.

You can’t go to a conference together. If you’re meeting in a room, you have to be in a room where either the door is open or there is a massive window on the door, and both people are facing toward the window so that everybody can see what is happening, so that there’s not a hint. There’s not even the possibility of anything taking place here at our church, including our parking lot or anywhere else in our community.

And sometimes people get frustrated with this policy. Sometimes we were like, man, that just seems so strict in our day and age. I can tell you this, it’s because I get sick and tired of hearing about friends of mine who are in ministry, and then all of a sudden, the devil creeps into their life and slowly but surely, either them or their spouse is dragged away because of some simple conversation that started in the coffee house that led to a lunch that led to some type of flirting online. And you know where eventually it gets to. And then they try to cover it up, and then it’s a secret. Then it’s a scandal, and the whole church is blown up because of one person’s actions. And I kid you not, just this last week, I had a friend of mine call me and he said, you need to pray for one of our classmates.

Now, I’ve been out of college for 20 plus years now, and he said to him, I hate to be the one to have to call and tell you this, but one of our fellow buddies that we graduated with just announced that he’s getting divorced and leaving his church. Five kids loves Jesus, powerful preacher and his wife decided that she should start a relationship with her massage therapist. And slowly but surely over a period of time until it came out. So she blew up her marriage. Those kids, now they got to suffer because of it. And now he’s probably not going to be in ministry anymore. This stuff is real and this is just the church side of it. I’m sure you guys can tell a whole lot deeper and more scandalous and more crazy stories out in the workforce.

And so for us here at Shepherd gate, I just want you to hear, this is why we stick to what we do. Not that people still can’t stand and go do stupid things. It’s because what we believe is so important to us and safeguarding our lives. What you’re going to continue to hear about this morning, this is why the Scripture say God says this fully sexual immorality. When you hear the word flee, what do you think? Run. Not poke at, not brush off, not walk away from you. Run from sexual immorality. Do you know this is the only time, the only sin where God tells us to run from it? Everything else he tells you to stand still, to resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

When it comes to sexual immorality, he tells you to run as fast as you possibly can in the other direction. Listen to this. Lean into this. Every sin that a person commits is outside their body, whether they’re a man or a woman, but he or she who commits sexual immorality, sins against their own body. Why is that? Why is it different when it comes to sexual sins? I thought all sins were created equal and all sins are equal before the Lord. This is why go back to the beginning of Genesis. You were created by Almighty God. You were the one woven together in your mother’s womb by the hand of God. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. Corinthians will tell you, keep reading the passages that follow this, that you were bought at a price when God nailed Jesus Christ to the cross and he stretched out his arms, he bought your physical body and he tells you you were bought at a price.

Therefore, honor God with your physical body when you were brought to the waters of baptism. Or God produces faith in your heart. In your life, your body becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit now lives and moves in and through you to do the work of God that he has called you to do this side of eternity. So did you get that God the Father created you, Jesus redeemed you, and the Holy Spirit lives in you. Father, son, Holy Spirit, our bodies are far more valuable to God than we even realize. So much so that if you die before Jesus comes back, your body or your ashes will go into a ground or go into an urn. And when Jesus comes back, those bones and those ashes will be reunited with your soul in heaven. And I know what you’re thinking. I don’t want this body. Thank you very much. It can stay right in the ground or in whatever urn my family picks for me. Newsflash. You don’t get a choice. God has already predetermined that. And if you have faith in Jesus because it is his final and ultimate victory over death, just as he raised Jesus physically in a physical body, he will raise us as well.

Thanks be to God. Here’s the good news you get. You get a new spiritual body. Just as Jesus had a spiritual body when you walked among the earth. Praise God. Amen. But here’s the point that’s how valuable your body is to God. Now, some of you might be here in a sermon like this, or scriptures like this, or conjuring up thoughts from the past.And maybe you’re going back to high school or college or a previous relationship or something that happened maybe even five years ago or last year. If you have confessed that to God, understand this you are a forgiven, redeemed child of God. He he accepts that confession. He understands that confession, confession, he receives it. And he’s parts that as far as the East is from the West, and he remembers it no more. You do not have to deal with the guilt and the shame and the pain of your past. Okay? So understand that this morning. So here we go back to Joseph doing his job, trying to live out his vocation as the head servant. One day he goes into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside where they all go.

I wonder who all sent him outside of the house. She, his wife, Potiphar, his wife, catches him by his cloak and says, come to bed with me. And what does he do? He flees. He left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house. Talk about a guy that gets it. Talk about a guy that wasn’t even allowed the clothes on his body to be compromised in this situation. But yet this woman’s sin was so, so entangled in her life that when she saw that he had left a cloak in her hand and ran out of the house, she called her household servants. Oh, okay. So now all of a sudden they reappear, and she says to all of them gathered, look, this Hebrew. So now she’s going to denigrate the guy who has been brought to us to laugh at us.

He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed when he heard me scream for help. He left the cloak beside me and ran out of the house. Imagine the conversation taking place. All the people that Joseph had built trust with in this entire household. She kept his cloak beside her until his until Potiphar comes home and she tells her husband the story that Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me, to make fun of me. But as soon as I scream for help, he left his cloak beside me. And here’s the proof, here’s the evidence. And he ran out of the house. As you look at these verses, as you kind of watch the way in which this woman is caving over and over again to her sinful desires and her sinful thoughts, and allowing the devil to have a foothold this morning.

Listen to this. This is how you can become a terrible wife. If you didn’t know. Number one, just be unfaithful in your marriage, and it doesn’t even have to mean it gets to the level of it being a sexual encounter. Flirt with the coworker that you have no business flirting with. Develop a relationship with somebody you have no business developing a relationship. Watch TV shows that make your mind and your heart fantasize about some type of relationship you wish you had with your husband. Guess what? It’s still cheating. How about this? Covet what you do not have. Well, how come the all the other wives have this and that? How come I don’t get these things? How come my husband’s a bum and their husbands are successful?

Why does it seem like they’re always getting all the things that they want? But here I am, over here, suffering. This woman had everything at her, at her disposal. She could have anything she wanted. All the wealth. And it still wasn’t enough. Let that sink in. She had everything earthly available to her. And it still wasn’t enough. How about this one, ladies? Create drama in the household. Manipulate the other people. Hey, servants. I think you guys should all leave the house. Why? Don’t worry about it. Leave the house. Causing dissension amongst the other people that are connected to you. And ultimately, when your husband comes home. Oh, yeah. Go ahead and lie to him. And I know this can be a trap again. Of the devil. Little white lies and what we’re so good at doing in our world is justifying the lies. Well, Tim, you don’t understand my husband. You don’t understand how unmotivated he is. And he plays video games and he does this and he does that and yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada. It still never gives you the right to lie to him. Did you know that? And I want you to think about this. As Pastor Ben shared last week, the article that he had read that 92% of men had viewed pornography in one week’s time. That’s the new national average. 92% of men view pornography every single week. And our society, that’s always so easy to point out the man and talk about the men and the men are pigs, and the men do this, and the men do that.

What do you think the percentage is for women that view pornography, that chase down this lustful desire in their heart? In 2016, it was 39%, in 2023, it rose to 44%. Do you think this number is going to go down or up? See, the reason it’s going to go up is there’s now porn companies and porn producers that specifically target women. There’s female owned, female only owned porn production companies, and they’re purposely creating porn specifically to target women. Here’s what all of you need to know, especially if you’re involved in raising the next generation that’s coming up. Those of you that are parents and grandparents, you might not even know this. Those of you that are boomers and builders, you might remember back in your day, it was magazines and it was Playboy, and Hugh Hefner was the one everyone was worried about.

But you actually had to do the legwork and go to a store and buy a magazine and hide it under your mattress. And it was all men, men, men, men, and maybe a little bit of women that led into Gen Xers and millennials, where everything began to move online. And now all of a sudden, you have all of these pornographic websites that are making billions of dollars because it’s so accessible in the in the cell phone, in our hands. And now what we’re seeing is the devil with a whole new tactic going after our young women. And I don’t know if you know this, but the next wave that’s coming up and what this next generation is going to be facing, the website that is having the biggest traction and making the most money right now is called OnlyFans.

And this is how OnlyFans work. It is user generated. And so young girls are taking pictures and taking videos because it’s so easy to do now with smartphones, and they’re posting pictures of their body and videos of their body online, and they’re hoping that men will subscribe to that and that somehow they’ll make money off of exposing their physical bodies online. And, you know, and I know that as soon as you put something online, you will never, ever, ever get it back. If you don’t believe me, listen to this statistic. Last year alone in 2024, OnlyFans brought in $5 billion, $5 billion. It’s all user generated. So think Uber, think Lyft. Think of Airbnb or Vrbo. It’s all the people that are doing this.

Are these young girls, girls that say, I don’t want to go to college. I’d rather just post pictures and videos because I’ll make so much more money than being a nurse, or being a mom, or doing whatever else that maybe other people think I should do. And so you have all of them generating this content, and then who do you think’s consuming it? Men. Who’s at fault? Both. Absolutely. And how do we convince a generation of young people coming up? You are so valuable before God. God sees you and he loves you, and he wants the best for you and the covenant of marriage and in your future. This is one of our key verses here at Shepherds Gate. It’s right from the mouth of God that marriage should be honored by all. And the marriage bed kept pure. Let me just help us with this this morning. Marriage between a man and a woman. You can go back and you can listen to sermon number five. We talked about marriage, men and women, and we talked about the sanctity and the purity of the marriage bed and what’s also happening in our society as alarming rate is how many young people think they need to go buy a house and move in together before they get married, or they think it’s okay and acceptable to have sex.

Premarital sex is what it’s called before they get married, and I can absolutely tell you that is not what God has for them. That is not God’s best for them, not only based on the Word of God. If you take God in Scripture out of the equation, and you just look at the statistics that are out there on this very subject, they’ll tell you 50% of marriages end in divorce. That hasn’t changed. We all know that, don’t we? If you cohabitate before you’re married, you are 50% more likely to get divorced. Why would you want to play with those odds? Why would you want to risk your entire life, your marriage, your family, your children, your legacy versus just going and getting married or abstaining until your wedding day? And we have always taken a firm stance here at Shepherd’s Gate, not because we don’t want people to have fun. Just, you know, not because we don’t want you to. You know, the excuse is always where we’re going to save money if we live together and all this other stuff that comes to being and when these when these subjects come up, that’s not the case. We know what God says. We know that the Word of God is crystal clear when it comes to what he has for us. And by the way, I’ll add this. This doesn’t just apply to 20 year olds and 30 year olds that are getting married. If you get divorced and then you and then you start dating just because you had sex when you were dating or when you were married, doesn’t mean you could start having sex now.

Just so you know, when it says keep the marriage bed pure. That is in the context and in the covenant of marriage. Because here’s the reality. God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Why does he judge us? He convicts us because he doesn’t want us to live this lifestyle. It’s his love for us that brings us back to the truth and back to the reality that we would confess it and then stop doing it, and then start living according to his ways and his plan. Now, listen to me this morning, because I know some of you. You’ve been through this, you’ve been through the divorce. You’ve been through terrible, insurmountable pain in your life and you need to hear this as well. There is life after divorce. There is life after broken relationships. God has not stopped working in and through you. If God can create your body, God can restore your body. If God is the one that can bring you into the covenant of marriage and by whatever reason, it blew up. God is also the one that can restore you into another healthy, wholesome marriage created and sustained by God. Amen.

So here comes Potter for his wife. She hears he’s coming home. And as soon as he comes through the threshold of the door, she says, hey, honey, I just want to let you know this is how your slave treated me. And of course, Potter’s reaction after he had all of this trust in Joseph, we would expect this. Any man would have this reaction. He burned with anger. He was so upset even at the thought of this. And here she is lying to him. And so what does he do? He takes and he puts him in prison with all of the other prisoners. And here Joseph gets to hit yet another horrible place in his life, sitting in a prison cell, probably wondering, I mean, what do I do now? Where do I go from here? And it’s so incredible. This guy in his character says, while Joseph was there in prison, the Lord was with him. Never left him, always with him. And he showed kindness to him, even in a prison cell. And he granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden, the guy that was responsible for all the other prisoners.

And then history repeats itself, because the warden actually sees this, and he puts Joseph in charge of all the other prisoners, and he made him responsible for all that was done there. All of the duties that they had to do. So you can imagine this. He’s the head prisoner now. The warden paid no attention to anything under his care because he had so much character, and he was such a strong leader, and he just displayed godly wisdom in living out his life.And the Lord continue to be with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did. I don’t know if I would have responded this way. I think I probably would have been in the corner asking a lot of why God questions anybody else I got. I almost died by the hand of my brothers. I got thrown in a pit and sold once and I got sold a second time. Now I’m not even sure if you know is going to kill me.

I think I would be having a pity party, to be honest with you. And yet here this amazing young man is able to keep his eyes fixed on God and trust God, and to recognize that God had never left him, even in the midst of some of the most difficult times of his life. I want you to think about this for a moment. Joseph is a slave. And he’s got people telling him what he can do and when he can do it. But yet inside, he’s spiritually free. He views life through who God is. And yet pot is Potiphar’s wife. She’s physically free to do whatever she wants. She can come and go as she pleases. She can buy anything that she pleases. And yet think about it. You kind of feel sorry for her in some ways, because she’s actually just a slave to her sin. Somehow the gospel needs to come to her, that she needs to be awoken from this tragedy that she finds herself in, that she thinks that somehow she’s going to find fulfillment or satisfy action in some one off sexual encounter with someone that’s not her husband.

Where are you at this morning? Maybe it’s not a sexual sin. Maybe there’s some other sin that you are allowing to fester in you that’s staying in there. Maybe it’s alcoholism. Maybe it is pornography. Maybe it’s anger. Maybe it’s gossip. You can’t control your lips. And you’re so miserable that every day you just. It’s just become this thing. It’s become insurmountable in your life. And yet there’s a God in heaven that sees you and knows you and pursues you and remind you that he loves you and that he wants to take that burden and that pain and that trap that you’re in, that enslavement that you’re in from you. Watch how God puts it. In Romans he said, what shall we say then?

Shall we go on sinning? That grace may increase? Absolutely not. Put a stop to it. Cry out to God. Ask for his help. Ask for his forgiveness. Ask for his grace. How can we who died to stand still, live in it? Here’s how pinpointed he gets on this. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. You got to confess that. You got to get it out. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness. Rather, realize you’re created by God. You’ve been purchased by Jesus and the Holy Spirit lives inside of you. Offer your body to God as those who have been brought from death to life. That when God sees you, he doesn’t see the sin that you have created and said he sees Jesus Christ in and through you, for sin shall no longer be your master. Did you hear that this morning? You are not enslaved to sin. You might be caught in habitual sin. You are not enslaved to sin. If the power of the Holy Spirit has forgiven you. It’s why we’re having a Holy Communion this morning, and it’s why we’re doing our worship set at the end of our service to give us time to process.

Because I know this is a heavy topic. I know this is not easy to hear, but if we don’t talk about it, who’s going to talk about it? If we don’t sound the alarm, then we all just come in here and get Jesus with some bunnies and some deer and we all go, hey, hey, hey. And then leave. And no one’s ever convicted and no one ever realizes the error of their ways or how serious sin is when it gets a foothold in our life. Now listen to the gospel again. He loves you. God knows the pain you’re going through. He knows the sin that continues to resurface itself over and over again in your heart. And it’s his love and mercy that brings you to the foot of the cross. And he says, look at what my son did for you. He’s paid for it for you because he loves you, and he doesn’t want you to have this pain anymore in your life. You don’t have to chase all of these other things, because he would rather fill you with His Holy Spirit and rather show you a better way.

And that’s what we get to experience this morning in Holy Communion. And so as we come forward and we receive the bread and the wine, we receive the actual presence of Jesus. Let that sink in for a moment. You receive Jesus for the forgive us of your sins, so that when you return to your seat, all of your sins that you have ever committed are completely wiped away. Amen. Praise God! And so, as is our custom here at Shepherd’s Gate, I invite all of you to bow your heads and close your eyes. And the reason we do this is because this is your time with our Heavenly Father. One on one, you and God. And in this moment, God, we know that your Holy Spirit’s at work in this place. For those of you that are watching online. God, give us the courage and the strength through the power of the Holy Spirit to confess all our sins to you in this moment.

Gracious heavenly father, thank you that you have heard our confessions. And because of your son Jesus, because of what he did for us on that cross. You do. And you have forgiven us of all of our sins, and you’ve cleansed us from all unrighteousness in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.