Uzzah and the Ox Cart

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

If you would, you can turn in your Bibles with me to 1 Chronicles 13. I feel like I need to give you some extra time to find 1 Chronicles this morning, so I'm going to do that. We're in 1 Chronicles 13 today. In the movie The Wizard of Oz, there is a famous plot twist in the second half of the movie where Dorothy is finally getting to see the wizard, But when she does in this scene in the Great Throne Room, she is terrified. She finds out that the great wizard is this huge green head and that she's terrified. And just when you are convinced that there's no way for Dorothy to get through this, to know how to speak to this this awesome and terrifying wizard, Toto, her dog, runs, finds a curtain, begins to pull at it, and then in the movie it is revealed that there is a man behind the curtain. It's actually a really famous phrase in our culture to talk about the man behind the curtain.

And it comes from the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain. A similar thing happens whenever people meet celebrities. So people meet celebrities and they're kind of nervous and and so they they meet their celebrity But after they they sit down and they have a conversation with their celebrity. There's this comfort that overwhelmed They're like, oh, they're just a they're just a normal person like me, right? So so they move from this place of fear or awe and then they they move into this place of

comfort This is also a popular way of talking about God So we talk about God in terms of, you know, God, I used to think that God was terrible and frightening and all of that, but now I have access to him and I'm not afraid anymore. Right? Now, you know, God's not terrible and frightening anymore. In fact, we often talk about hellfire and brimstone preachers from 50 years ago, or maybe even sooner than that. that. And many of us kind of shake our heads or roll our eyes and we wonder how people could talk like that. Or we wonder how people could sit and listen to that whenever God is depicted like the wizard that you see up there, the big green head with the fire in front of them. We speak about all these things and we wonder how people would talk about it, but still, still, when we read about how God presents himself in scripture, it actually sounds very terrifying, way more terrifying than what we're

used to. In fact, what we're going to see today as we look at scripture is that truly the only way that people come to God is through fear. Fear is in fact a first step in coming to God. This might sound a little off-putting like why are we talking about fear? But what I want to show you is that in scripture, this is not a taboo thing to talk about. In scripture, fear is actually discussed a lot. And so to do that, we're going to look at a passage, a very difficult passage, in 1 Chronicles 13. And we read about a guy named Uzzah. Uzzah is another one of our hidden figures. This whole summer we are going to be looking through people that many of us will gloss over. In fact, when I say Uzzah, you guys probably don't even know who I'm talking about. Okay? Uzzah. Never heard of it. U-Z-Z-A-H. Uzzah. These are people that we can call small players. They are not headliners. They are not influencers. They don't have their YouTube

channel. They don't have anything like that. They're normal people, right? Like us. These small players though, like Uzzah, are caught up in a big story. Those stories help us see God's character, His faithfulness to us, his faithfulness to generations. Okay, all these things kind of come to the fore in the middle of the story that these small players are caught up in. And these small players in the big story inform our real life. Romans 15, 4 says that we have these stories for our instruction. We have Old Testament stories for our instructions. These are small players that show us a big God at work and they show us how we can respond well. So this is our series, Hidden Figures, Small Players, Big Story, Real Life. Last week, we looked at Jonathan and his armor bear. This week, we're going to look at Uzzah and his ox cart and the ark. We're going to pick up in 1st Chronicles 13.

We're going to start in verse seven as you are getting your finger there. I just want to tell you the events that happened just before this moment, David, King David, that David has been made king over Israel just then. Okay in first Chronicles 12 David had been made king over Israel and Or 11 anyway what you see in the preceding chapters is a wave of victories King David is on a campaign and he is Doing a great job victory all over the place And so in in verses five and six it says that David decides to bring up the ark of God back to Israel Okay, and so this is what we come upon in 1 Chronicles 13, 7 through 8. And so let's read that. It says, and they carry, they being all of Israel, carry the ark of God on a new cart from the house of Abinadab, and Uzzah and Ahio were driving the cart. And David and all Israel were celebrating before God with all their might,

with song and lyres and harps and tambourines and cymbals and trumpets. So we might look at that and we think, okay, what is the ark of God? Now, there's a lot I could say here, but I think I'm just gonna leave you with a Spurgeon quote. Charles Spurgeon, a famous Baptist preacher of Yore, he says, the whole ark was one of the most sacred things. It was the expression of God's dwelling with them. for where that ark was, God specially rested. It's enough for us to be able to say that the ark signified or embodied God's presence. The ark was something that was extremely important, extremely sacred. And for David and really for all of Israel, bringing the ark back to Israel signified a oneness with the Lord. They were celebrating with all their might, like it says, because God's presence, his favor, his resting place was coming back to Israel.

And this is why verse eight sounds like a big party. It's why there's like tambourines and harps and everything. But in the very next verse, the party stops abruptly. Verses nine and 10 of 1 Chronicles 13. And when they came to the threshing floor of Caidan, Uzzah put out his hand to take hold of the ark for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah and he struck him down because he put out his hand to the ark And he died there before God. So just to recap, Uzzah is next to the ark. We feel like we just got to know him, but he died. So this is a very short sermon. Uzzah is next to the ark. He's next to the cart. And when the ox that's pulling the cart stumbles, Uzzah reaches out his hand, and he touches the ark, because he feels like the Ark needs studying. We don't know if it's actually falling off or not. The narrative doesn't really tell us,

but he does touch the Ark and God kills him for it. And when God does that, that shocks and scares everyone, everybody involved. It's even unsettling for us to read. It was unsettling for King David to experience. We see in the next verse, verse 11, it says, David was angry because the Lord had broken out against Uzzah. And that place is called Perez Uzzah to this day. We can relate to David's anger here, especially since it seemed like Uzzah was doing something completely harmless. He was just, in fact, you could even say he was trying to do a good thing. He didn't want the ark to fall off of the ox cart because an ox stumbles.

And so from David's perspective, and really, if we're honest from our perspective, if we just happen upon this story, God looks petty. It looks like God is saying, hey, that's a tiki-tak foul. In basketball, there's big fouls and then there's little fouls. and he's bored, there's kind of like that. And it seems like what Uzzah did was tiki-tak, was really small, and that God just killed him immediately is very strange, unsettling, makes God seem petty.

We get angry with God for those exact same reasons and we wonder why innocent people suffer. We wonder why catastrophes happen. We wonder why those things go on. That we get angry with God because from our perspective, it seems like God is not being consistent or that God is being petty, that God is not doing things according to how it should be done. And he's God, so he should do those things. And we get angry. David has a second reaction to us' death in the next verse, and it's the one that I want to focus on today, that reaction, verses 12 and 13 of Chronicles, 1 Chronicles 13. And David was afraid of God that day, and he said, how can I bring the ark of God home to me? So David did not take the ark home into the city of David, but took it aside to the house of Obed-Edom, the Gittite. So David stops the procession. David says, okay, we're not taking the ark back.

Us is dead. We're gonna rename this place so we remember that happened. And we're gonna leave the ark here and just go home. And this, this fear, right? You see that David is afraid. He's saying, look, if we just, if this just happened, then obviously something's going on. We're not totally aware. We're just gonna take our hands off. We're just going to step back because nobody else wants to die.

And this is the reaction that most of us jumped to. And this really emotionally, this brings us all the way back to Dorothy before the wizard, except there is no curtain to pull back. We're just terrifying. And there's, there's like, uh, a lot of this, a lot of this stuff coming as there's flames popping up and we're, we're kind of like, okay, I don't know what to do with that. I'm afraid. I don't want to approach God that way. I'm terrified. In fact, when you look in the Old Testament, when people would see an angel, when people would see an angel, the Bible said, and they were scared. They were terrified. And that doesn't mean they were surprised or that they're, oh, an angel in my room. No, it's that they thought they were going to die. And that is everybody, everybody's reaction to an angel, to seeing an angel. Old Testament, New Testament, doesn't matter.

Is that people thought they were going to die. For David and for us, we need to know that what God did with Uzzah and the ox card in the ark, what God did there is not out of character for him. In fact, it's actually more lined up with what we see throughout all of scripture. many, many, many, many times, more times than we're comfortable admitting, God kills people in judgment.

And it's unsettling. He kills a whole Egyptian army in judgment. He kills a bunch of Canaanites in judgment. He kills, I mean, God kills a lot of people in judgment. I mean, if you read through the Old Testament, you're going to trip over at least a few places where it's like, and these people were disobedient and God killed them in judgment. It's tough. Even in the New Testament, I mean, I just said Old Testament, but even in the New Testament, you have this incident in Acts 5 where these two people ananias and Sapphira, they're a married couple, they go in and the church has just started, and they go and they sell a field and they give a portion of that to the church, but they tell the church that that's all of the money. And so it wasn't that they didn't give the money, it was that they lied about how much they were giving. And for that, God killed both of them.

That's the New Testament. That's not, we're not in Second Chronicles or First Chronicles there, we're in Acts five. God kills people like this often. And it makes us pull back from him. It makes us worried, scared, and afraid. And maybe after we kind of gather ourselves a little bit, we kind of have this thing in our head and we keep saying something like, wait a second. Wait a second. God is supposed to be loving and gracious and merciful. I thought you loved people, we would say to God. And in fact, we would quote 2 Peter 3:9 to God. And we would say, the Lord does not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

And we would say, what about us? Why did he die? What about the Egyptian army? What if there's some people that were just doing what they were told? Why did they have to drown in the Red Sea? And what I would say is that God is loving. God is gracious, and he is merciful. and he doesn't stop being those things whenever he kills Uzzah. But God is also holy. He is patient, he is kind, he's loving and gracious and merciful, but he's also holy. And in fact, one reason we know of God's gracious love is because he is holy. The reason Uzzah needed to die is because God is holy.

I want you to remember something. I want you to remember how I talked about the Ark, right? The Ark was one of the most sacred things that Israel knew of. In fact, there was one moment whenever they were in a battle with the Philistines, the Philistines captured the Ark, bring it back to the Philistine encampment, and everybody breaks out with tumors like the next day because the Ark is there. Then they bring the Ark all the way back and they're like, we're not touching that thing again. Okay, that's the arc of the covenant. That's the thing that Uzzah touched. It was one of the most sacred things because God had set it aside as such. In Exodus 25, by the way, I'm gonna be quoting these Old Testament laws. David knew full well all these laws. Most of Israel knew full well all that I'm about to quote here. Exodus 25, God told everybody to carry the arc with poles.

I know it's hard to explain, but it's a big box. There's rings on the corners. Through those rings go big, long acacia poles. And that's how the ark was supposed to be carried. On poles. That's part of the design. In Numbers 4, we are told that God told everyone that only Levites get to carry the ark. Okay, so just be ready here. We're talking about the ark of God. We're talking about his presence and what he's saying. He's saying look. I'm I'm gonna bless you I'm gonna give you my presence in a box Okay, I'm gonna do that for you But if I'm going to do that and I will but if I'm doing that that I'm giving you Special you need to be very careful with how you handle it you can't just load it on an ox cart and walk it down the street. It doesn't work that way. That's not how I've given you my presence. And you can see in 1 Chronicles 13, this is later verified in 1 Chronicles 15, whenever they see the error of their ways.

Uzzah is not a Levite. Neither is Ahio, the other guy carrying the ark. And there are no poles to be found. It specifically says in 1 Corinthians 1 Chronicles 13 that they put it on a new cart, on an ox cart. So this thing, this symbol of God's presence is supposed to be hoisted up upon poles. Only Levites are doing that. Instead, it's put upon an ox cart and oxen are pulling it and two guys are just kind of next to it.

And maybe it's helpful to say it this way. Even before Uzzah touches the ark, God could have rightfully killed everyone there. Period. No apology needed, no explanation. God had every right to wipe out everybody in that procession. And it would have been on David, but God could have rightfully killed everybody. yet God is gracious in sparing all of them. He only kills Uzzah. It would be like, it would be like when Uzzah dies, it would be like somebody touching a live, downed telephone wire. I don't know if you've ever seen that, but just this, it's this, you know, telephone wire, it's on the ground, it's sparking, it's kinda jumping around, it's going crazy. It would be like if that were on the ground And somebody just ran up and touched it and definitely got electrocuted and definitely died on the spot. Okay, because that's going to happen if you touch a live wire.

Just saying, if you ever see a telephone wire down on the ground, don't touch it. It's not a good idea. Okay, it'll be like us in the ox cart. But it would be like somebody touched that and then they get electrocuted and they died. And we have it upon that going, man, I guess God wanted to kill this person. Well, no, we'd say like, no, he touched the live wire. That's why he died.

When Uzzah is dealing with the ark, the presence, it is something infinitely more powerful than a live telephone wire. And when we look at that live telephone wire, we don't see it as evil, we see it as powerful. We see it as something that we need to respect. We need it as something to be afraid to touch. That's a really healthy thing to be afraid to touch a live wire. Nobody here is saying, well, no, we shouldn't be afraid. We should, we should just respect the wire. No, you should be afraid to touch it. You will die. Fear in that instance is a good thing. In our ignorance, we look at the incident with Uzza touching the art and it seems like an act of petty violence. It it is used it is trotted out to make God sound like some moral monster

It is in fact an act of grace We just don't understand what the ark is we don't understand its relationship to who God is We don't understand reverence for that because of our ignorance. We just look at that and go. Why did God kill us? But we don't understand. And this really gets down to it, doesn't it? Because it's not that we're so mad about Uzzah. We don't even know Uzzah. A lot of you didn't even know who Uzzah was until this morning, okay? All right? Who knew who Uzzah was before this morning? Go ahead. Okay, there's like three of you. Okay, you're welcome. Now you know about Uzzah. But we're not mad about Uzzah. We're not up in arms about his legacy or anything like that.

The thing that we have trouble with is that we have trouble reconciling a God who brings comfort with a God whose holiness strikes fear. That's what we have the problem with. We see God's grace bring in comfort and we're down with that. We understand that. We relate to that. We're there, we're good. Okay, but a God whose holiness rightfully strikes fear in us, that's something we are much less comfortable with. That makes us remember 50 years ago how fire and brimstone preachers, or at least remember stories if we weren't there personally. What I want to do this morning, I want to give you two reasons. That that grace that brings comfort and that holiness that brings fear. I wanted two reasons why they work together and in both of those there's a reason for hope. So why they work together and then what's the reason for hope in the midst of that? The first reason that those two things work together is that fear leads to knowledge and

relationship. Like I said with the illustration with the telephone wire, there is a moment, there are moments whenever fear is completely appropriate. There was a moment when my family and I were vacationing in, I don't remember where anymore, it was either Alabama or Galveston, I don't remember which, but it was one of the most harrowing moments of my entire life because we arrived there and all the kids are very little. I mean, story at this point, who's my middle child, is like one or one and a half or some version, just really young. And so the twins are just babies and Jed and Riley are like three and four and a half. So everybody's really young, four and a half or younger, and we're at the beach and we arrive at night. So we arrive at night at the beach, we're meeting Chrissy's parents there and Chrissy's brother, and everybody comes in and we're like, okay, everybody's here, this is good, okay, we're

good. So then it's at night on the beach and so some of the kids want to play, some of the kids don't. So we're all out at the beach. And we thought all five kids were out at the beach. And then when we come in from the beach, we're counting heads, and there's four, not five. Now I've got to remind you, this is a condo. This is like a four condo comp, not condo, four hotels all in a row in a complex. These are like eight-story hotels. So that's like 32 stories that my daughter could be in. Or she could be out on the beach. Or she could be drowning. I don't know where she is. In that moment, as anxious as you're getting right now, I was that for a full 45 minutes. It was fearful. I was afraid. But what should my wife have done? Should she have come to me and said, Drew, you know what? You don't need to be afraid. Don't be afraid. Everything's fine. I don't know how it would have reacted,

but it probably wouldn't have been my best moment as a dad. Because both of us, I mean, I don't think my wife would have actually said that to me. Maybe I would have said that to her foolishly. In that moment, fear is 100% appropriate. 100% appropriate. If you have a little kid who's won and can't swim, and they're running around a pool. What are you going to tell them? You're going to tell them, don't do that, and you're going to give them a story about being afraid. You could drown, is what we would say to them. And that is going to make the kid kind of jump back in fear. But that's a really appropriate fear for that child to have. Now, the child doesn't need to be afraid of water forever. But in that moment, yes. That fear is 100% appropriate. Being reminded of God's holiness is uncomfortable. It is unsettling. It doesn't make for good party conversation. I'll give you all that.

That's true. However, being reminded of God's holiness works to snap us back to the fact that we are dust and he is God. That's uncomfortable, but that's really good. That the distance, the actual distance, in any kind of measurement that you could put out there, the distance between you and God is insurmountable. It is unable to be bridged. There's no way you could get there on your own. And that is a good thing to remember, that fear. It is it is an accurate thing to feel that distance

Holiness God's holiness that helps us bring an appreciation in for the grace that is extended to us despite that distance or Maybe I can say the different way if God were not holy It would be no stretch for him to meet us where we are if if God were somehow our equal or somehow like us, morally, in any way, there would not be a need for him to be that gracious or merciful to come and meet us. It would just be sort of a nice thing to do to walk across the room and shake our hand, but it wouldn't be some thing that we need to get all excited about. We don't need to sing praise songs about somebody who is our equal, including us in on a conversation. That's not noteworthy, it's not good, it doesn't matter. It's insignificant, but when we understand the amount of love and grace and mercy that it took for God to bridge an insurmountable bridge for us to reach out to us,

It helps us understand the weight of grace. It helps us to see and appreciate the fact that God, in His infinite holiness, would still reach out to us, unholy, common people. Proverbs 9:10 says, "'The fear of the Lord at the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.'" The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Knowing God's holiness, let me just, maybe I could say it a different way, knowing God's holiness is the first step to a relationship with him.

Fearing God, to know God, we must begin, we will begin with fear. God desires for us to seek him, to know him, to be in his presence, but when we truly see him and know Him and are in His presence. That is a terrible, terrifying thing. We will fear Him. If God's presence were to descend on this room right now, all of us would believe that we are going to die. Period. That is what you see in Scripture consistently. We would fear for our lives. That is not a bad thing. Everyone is going to fear God whenever they see Him. But this is our reason for hope. It's not just that we'd be terrified, it's that there's something after that. Fear is only the first step in knowing God. Because in a relationship with our Creator, we need to understand that fear goes hand in hand with love and grace and hope, that they all work together, that they're all woven into the same tapestry.

In the book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, written by C.S. Lewis as part of his Chronicles of Narnia series, Jesus is a consistent character through a lot of those books. He's depicted as a lion. And not like a tame lion with clothes on that kind of walks on two feet, just a full-on lion. The lion's name is Aslan. And when the protagonist or some of the characters who are kind of moving the story along, there are four children, the Pevensie children. And when the Pevensie children first hear that the person who's supposed to save them, the person who's supposed to make everything right is a lion, an actual lion, like with teeth and claws and everything. this insightful quote that happens when the kids ask some of the other people in Narnia, they ask, is he safe? They're like, oh, he's a lion. And they're kind of afraid. And they go, well, is he safe?

As if to find some kind of comfort in the fact that he's manageable. Is this a tame lion? They ask, is this a lion that will kind of do what we needed to do? Can we somehow take the edge off of this lion? The response is from Mr. Beaver. The response is, safe? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good. He's the king, I tell you. He's not safe, but he's good. God's not safe, not in that sense, but He's good. If we're gonna reconcile a God who brings comfort with the God who strikes fear, we need to see that God is presenting Himself to us as He is in all of His majesty, in all of His grace,

in all of His love, in all of His faithfulness, all of those things are together. God does not stop being holy to talk to you. God is who he says he is all the time. And when he does reveal himself to us, his holiness will shine through, and we will be afraid of that. We will jump back on that, but that's not the end of the story. Here's another way that fear and comfort work together, is that fear sets us on the path to life.

So fear, it doesn't just lead to knowledge and relationship. It helps us see, so Proverbs 19:23 says, the fear of the Lord leads to life. So it's not just the beginning of wisdom. It's not just what we need to understand. It's not going to be just this reaction to understanding who God is whenever He says He's holy, but it also actually leads to life. There are times whenever you and I need to be reminded that we are dealing with a holy God. There is a way for us to approach God like Dorothy. We approach God and then, you know, it's terrible and it's awful and we're just afraid. But then there's a moment whenever God comes to us and says, fear not, right? Whenever God comes to us and says like, I'm coming to save you. I'm not safe, but I am good. I am coming for you. You are a people for my own possession. I am not safe, but I am good and I do love you. Fear in that respect can help us see why we should follow Jesus.

Let me explain. There is a fear that can lead to death. Okay, that's not the fear that we're talking about. We're not talking about a spouse being afraid that they will be abused by their significant other. We're not talking about that kind of fear. We're not talking about somebody that is fearing something that they don't deserve. That's not the kind of fear. We're not talking about oppression, the kind of fear that you should run away from. We're not talking about that kind of fear. This is different. There is a fear that can lead to death. This is like a criminal who fears being caught. Well, that criminal does need to fear because God will one day make that criminal pay for for the wrongdoing. This is a real consequence of sin. This is real. But this helps us understand the offer that Jesus makes because when we sin, God will make someone pay.

Let me say it again. When we sin, God will indeed make someone pay because He is holy and just. He doesn't, in other words, he doesn't just say, well, that's not a big deal. I mean, that can slide. That's fine. No, that's fine. Let me use an illustration that might help. If you were in a courtroom just watching and there was somebody that had come up that had murdered somebody or that had stolen somebody, that judge, if that judge would say, hey, did you do this? And the criminal says, yeah, but I'm really sorry. The judge said, okay, I mean, that's good enough. You would be outraged, especially if they had perpetrated a sin against you. You'd be outraged. You'd be right to be outraged. In fact, if that happened across the board, our society would cease to function.

Do you get what I'm saying? There is a justice that holds things together, that reflects God's justice, God's holiness. Would all fall apart, but this again helps us see because got God will make someone pay because he's holy and just He's not gonna just let it slide but this is exactly what Jesus has done for us He has paid our sin and if he had not if Jesus had not paid for our sin Then we would have had to answer for it Because God is holy and just I want you to think about that for just a minute I just want you to let that sink in. All that stuff that you've done, all that guilt that you need to be back, all of that, all of it. God has every right to string you up and put you to death, every right. And he's still gracious and merciful and loving in the process. He doesn't even break his own character to do that. That is a dreadful thought. That is a fearful thought.

But when we let that sink in, we begin to understand what Jesus did for us. That Jesus didn't just like pick up the tab for lunch. Jesus paid a debt that we could never pay back. And sometimes we miss, we forget the weight of that debt that Jesus paid for us. The weight of our sin is sobering, and this, this is our reason for hope. It's not just that comfort and fear work together in some theoretical nebulous thing, it's that in our real life, day to day, the weight of our sin is sobering, and it reminds us to place our hope in Jesus actively, not ourselves. It reminds us to follow Jesus, not our desires. It reminds us to put everything we have into following him, into loving our church family, into developing spiritual habits. It motivates us, not because if we don't do it, we're somehow gonna be struck down like us. It motivates us because we have been given grace upon grace,

upon grace, upon grace. stuff we can't even begin to pay back. That grace is only felt when we understand what it covered. When we do, when we understand what it covered, and we understand all that grace that we've been given, it is a motivator. When we feel the weight of our sin and we are not crushed by it, that leads us to live a righteous life. It leads us to find joy in our redemption. I wanna end with this. There is a famous Puritan preacher. His name is Jonathan Edwards. He wrote a very famous book that was criticized destructively in every English class from here to Sin Book II. The name of the book is Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Now Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is exactly kind of what it sounds like, right? And so English teachers would trot that thing out and say, here's what Puritans wrote about. Look how backward and repressive they were.

And so they're like, look, look, it's just it's sinners that are just waiting to be squashed in the hands of an angry God. Let me read you. Let me just show you an excerpt from the actual book, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. I don't know if you've ever read it, but here it is. It actually says this. Well, let me just say, it talks about, It has just said, like, hey, there's people out there that want to count on their moral living to save them. They want to count on their family heritage to save them. They want to count on their good works to save them. And it actually says this, it says, if God should withdraw his hand, your moral living, your good works would avail no more to keep you from falling than thin air to hold up of a person that is suspended in it. Even in a book that describes the terrible and awesome presence of God and being in his hands, even in that book, the understanding is that that hand,

those hands are holding you up, not crushing you. Those hands are keeping you alive. They are keeping you from the worst consequences of what you've done. They are keeping you from that. They are holding you up. They are preventing you from falling. They aren't caging you up. Sinners in the hands of an angry God, I think is probably our view of it at least, is like a microcosm of how our culture understands fear. We think fear to be repressive and naive. We think fear to be archaic, something that, you know, only stupid people kind of fall for, right? It's the trick of religion to just be afraid of God. No, no, it's no trick. Ozzie didn't think it's a trick. It's not a trick. It's real. And if you are a Christian, if you say, I believe in God, if you say, if you mean that, then you need to understand that the person that you worship is great, that his presence would strike fear into you, but also that what he has done for

you is immeasurable. We're gonna have a time, a response, where we're just gonna sing. I'm gonna be up in the front, just standing right here. And as we do, as we sing, we're gonna sing a few songs. If there's something you need to pray for, if there's something that you wanna kind of talk through, we can, this is heavy, but this is really important. This is really good. It's a really good first step. Fear is the beginning for a lot of us. I know in my own life, I came from a place of fear, But I didn't stay there.

I still fear God in a good way. But maybe for some of you, that was a first time thing. So I wanna encourage you as we pray, or as we sing, excuse me. If you need prayer, if you need to make a decision, if you need to join our church, if you wanna be baptized, then you can make all those decisions. You can tell somebody about it right now. I'm gonna be right up here at the front. And so you can come and pray with me. Let's stand and sing.

Alone my sorrows and dead my sin, Lost without hope with no place to begin. Your love made a way, let mercy come in, Death was arrested in my life again. Now Ash was redeemed, only beauty remakes Whore from heart was given a name Who quieted my feet rose to dance When death was arrested in my lively gaze So, wash us over, it's your embassy These are my chains, I'm a prisoner no more My shame was ransom, you faithfully void He canceled my debt and he called me his friend When death was arrested in my life again Oh, your grace so washes up You have made me new, it's your endless love Pulling down us, you have made me new Our Savior displayed on a criminal's cross And darkness rejoices though heaven had lost But then Jesus arose with all freedom in hand When death was arrested, my life began When death was arrested, my life began Oh, your grace, it so washes over

Dance with me, it's your endless loving dance Come join the songs of all the redeemed, oh, we're free Amen, when death was arrested, and my life began Oh, we're free, free, forever we're free Come join the songs of all the redeemed Oh, we're free, and when death was arrested, and my life began When death was arrested, and my life began Oh your grace, throw free, washes up your endless song You are the, let the King, let the King of my heart It's my song, for you are the good, good, good, good Oh let me, ever gonna let me down, for you are the good, the good child of weakness watch and pray finding me thine all in all and Jesus paid it all Adul to him I owe. Sted had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow I find. Thy power and thine alone Can change the leper's spots And melt the heart of stone. Jesus paid a whole door to Him, I owe. Then had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow, the throne.

I stand in Him complete. Jesus died my soul to save. My lips shall still repeat. Jesus paid her door, and all to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white and so. Praise the one I did, and raise us like that, raise us like that. Oh, praise the one I did, and raise us like that. He's a spade, oh, a dove to hear my oath. His fear hath left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. While you're standing, I want to say two things very quickly. First, I forgot to say it. Happy Father's Day to all my fathers in the house. And I wish you well today that you get exactly what you're asking for, which is probably not what you're going to get. And that's OK, because you're a father, and you'll love it no matter what. Also, just continue to be in prayer for our VBS that just happened. There's a lot of follow-up to do, a lot of work to do building up those connections.

And so continue to be in prayer for VBS, and that's why our decorations are as such, because VBS just happened. So as you're dismissed, make sure you stick your hand out check a hand to someone else. That's why we have name tags.