Lighthouse Covenant Church Hebrews Sermon Series

The speaker is discussing the passage from Hebrews 9:11-22, which talks about Christ as a high priest and the significance of his blood in securing redemption. They emphasize the importance of knowing and understanding the truth of God's Word and the need for blood sacrifice in the Old Testament. The speaker also discusses different approaches to preaching and teaching, highlighting the importance of understanding God's holiness and grace. They mention the privilege of entering into God's presence and the significance of blood sacrifices for the Jewish people. Amen. So we are in Hebrews 9 verses 11 through 22. If you do not have a Bible, there are some in the pews in front of you. There is also on the screen the Word of God that we're in this morning, beginning in verse 11, once again chapter 9, But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For there is a will involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood, for when every command of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you. And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated. So, I entitled this message this morning, There Must Be Blood. And in that, as we think about the word that we received this morning, one of the things I first want to talk about is this idea, how many of you have ever heard of plausible deniability? Politicians play it all the time, right? But we live in a world of plausible deniability. We live in a world where most people, most of the time, instead of declaring and walking in declared and known true truth, we respond to people with a sort of subjective truth that this may be true for you, and this may be true for me, and so we can agree to disagree. And we continue to see the shredding of a cohesive culture because everybody maintains a plausible deniability. I say everybody, that's a generalization. But I think as we think about this, as we think about what the Word of God is telling us with regard to His covenant, one of the things that Christians must understand is that once you know and once you hear, you can't go back. When you know something to be true, and what's our plumb line for knowing anything is true? The Word of God. So once we unpack and uncover things that are true in the Word of God, we are no longer allowed to say, well, maybe it's not true. Maybe I don't know if I really know the whole truth. In fact, I'm not a biblical scholar. I don't know the original languages. I don't want to impose upon you anything that I value because I understand I can't judge you. You can't judge me. That's just sort of the overall overarching way we do life in the 21st century. So with that sort of general reality in mind, there are seasons and times in our lives as Christians where we do everything we can to remain just simply steady. Just don't want to rock our boat or anyone else's boat. Life gets difficult. Life is challenging. I have my own things going on. I don't want to get too sideways in any one direction or another. So let me just put my head to the plow, and the plow usually being my job and what's right in front of me in the secular temporal world. And let me just leave you alone, and you can leave me alone. There are other times, whether because of a particular study or because we're doing more of a disciplined time of prayer, or we're finding ourselves in a new discipleship relationship, there are times that we may experience what seems to be an eye-opening point of spiritual growth and transformation. And there are still other times that we might even feel like we're regressing, or as some Christians say, backsliding. Usually those times are found when we are practicing abject sin, or we're neglecting the means of grace that God has given us, such as fellowship and communion with the body of Christ, as well as our Bible reading. And though Christ is on his throne and cannot in any way be found negligent for his part in our lives, we do here on earth often have an ebb and flow to our lives. And sometimes that ebb and flow is more tempestuous than others. Since becoming a Christian, I've noticed this in my life as well as throughout my time as a pastor. I see it all the time. It's just sort of the way life is. But by God's grace, what I've come to appreciate with tremendous gratitude is that his gift of salvation radically transformed my perception of everything. I think that one of the things that the Lord impressed upon me immediately upon my conversion was the clarity, or what was apparent to me as the gift of discernment, for understanding the lack of clarity for spiritual things among the body of Christ. And as this has been as much of a burden as anything else in ministry, because I knew from the very beginning, I was called to be a pastor, the calling of God and the equipping that God gave me for the work that was trending in my life was a strong tend towards the ministry of prophesying. And what I mean by prophesying is not future telling in any way, but simply the preaching of God's Word and the applying it to the lives of those whom I'm called to shepherd. That is modern day true prophecy, preaching the Word of God, and then showing how it applies to our lives in today's world. And why would that be such a burden? Doesn't every pastor do this? Aren't all preachers and teachers doing the same thing just in different ways? Firstly, I know from both practical experience and reading and other types of research that the answer to that question is no, not all pastors do the same thing. Some pastors, as many of you know, they teach to an incredible depth of God's Word with a knowledge and understanding of the original languages that allows them to speak Koine Greek or Aramaic or ancient Hebrew as if it's their native tongue. And so perhaps their ministry will be more academic. Others preach and teach in ways that could be considered prophetic in terms of preaching and applying God's Word, but the application tends towards self-improvement and encouragement, what I heard coined as moralistic, therapeutic deism. And that was when I was with Acts 29, that was sort of our go-to phrase when we heard pastors giving the Word and then making sure it applied to you in such a way that you were sure to feel uplifted, to feel good about yourselves. The emphasis then is to intentionally help professing Christians to behave better and feel better about themselves in moralistic, therapeutic deism. And think about that for a minute, because what that ultimately discounts is the understanding of God's holiness and our fallenness and the impassable chasm between the two. The illusion that someone could come up here with God's Word and say to you that you ought to behave in a particular way that will make you feel better about yourself completely discounts the radical lack of understanding or lack of perception or the radical reality that God is utterly and perfectly holy. It is not good for the human soul for people to somehow believe that they're okay, that they're doing just fine in the presence of a holy and perfect God. That's our only comparison. We don't compare ourselves to other people. We don't pick the worst sinners in the world and say, well, I'm not as bad as that person and I've done a good deed today. We look to God. And we look to God with utter fear and awe and joy in His grace because He allows us to look to Him and have fellowship with Him. But we must always understand His holiness. And that doesn't mean that we must be a broken vessel constantly saying that we're not good enough. The next step after that, after understanding His holiness and your sinfulness, is to then always understand His grace. And His grace is what brings you joy. Not your behavior. Never your behavior. You must understand that you ain't got nothing coming. God doesn't owe you anything. And yet, He gave His one and only Son so that you and I could have fellowship with Him all the time. In our jacked up ways, in our sinful ways, we get to still come to God and acknowledge who we are and yet what He has done. And then saying, thank you, Lord, for giving me an audience, for giving me a presence with you covered in the blood of Jesus Christ. This passage demonstrates the reality, the same reality I'm talking about in our culture, is going on for the Jewish people. What the Jews understood through the holy place where they made the sacrifice and the most holy place that they could never go and only one guy could go maybe once a year, was getting into the presence of God was a huge privilege. And there's no way for me to be there. They, every week, at least, every week, were witnessing. I don't know if you've gone hunting. I've talked about this a little bit before. I don't know if you've gotten any kind of a wreck where things are really a bloody mess. But in the killing of an animal and in the skinning of an animal and the, hopefully, eating of an animal, we see blood everywhere. It is very messy. And these people were exposed to that sort of image every week, at least, understanding the cost for them of sin. And in understanding that cost, their minds were still not purified. Their consciences were still not purified, as we read in Hebrews 9 thus far. They still didn't have a good conscience. They still didn't stop sinning. They just knew, I better stock up on sheep and goats. It's going to be a long year. If I don't have a sheep or a goat, I've got to go find somebody who does have something that I can, a nice animal they can give me. Or maybe the high priest will do me a solid somehow. I need something to make sure that I know that I'm forgiven. I need to see that there's blood being spilled out for my sins of commission and for my sins of omission. So this was a constant reality in their lives because they knew who they were and they knew who God was. And what we see again in this passage with regard to this idea that there must be blood is that the reality for the Jewish people, you see this throughout the Old Testament, is that they were looking forward to the cross. We often look at the trajectory of God's story and we don't realize that the Old Covenant people were looking forward to the same cross we look back on. They knew that there was going to be a day, they knew that there was going to be a Messiah who would change everything for them. They could finally stop one day having to worry about these temple sacrifices. That something, somehow, God was going to resolve this reality for them. They did not know how that was going to happen and crazy if they would think it was going to happen from some guy who had to die on a cross. It had to be something much more miraculous than that, much more clean than that. Somehow God would do something that would seem better than that. I don't know what better would be in anybody's eyes. I know that 20 years ago there was a movement that was starting in churches, it was called the Emergent Church Movement. And there were people that were constantly talking about the way in which this whole thing that we see with regard to the cross is cosmic child abuse. That there's got to be a better God than a God who would have to kill a human for me to have access to him. In fact, I don't even want a God that would require such a blood sacrifice. In thinking about that, just hold on for a moment. I want you to go with me. I'm going to go to 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 1. This is Paul writing to the Church of Corinth. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. When we look at God and we accuse him of something like cosmic child abuse, what we're doing is we're saying that God, you're more like me than you really understand. And we want to put God in that kind of framework so we can handle our relationship with him. A God that is too glorious, too majestic, too powerful, too outside of our minds is a God that we find very difficult to have company with. There's something intrinsic about the reality of our fallenness. And what was happening with the Jewish people when the covenant was shifting and what happens in the lives of Christians is when we begin to get this perspective on the gospel that is good and right and beautiful, when we get this understanding of just how sinful we are and what a privilege it is to be in the presence of God, that means that you have the Holy Spirit within you. This is the hope part. This is a good thing. We don't see this shift in covenant and the fact that Jesus took care of everything through his blood on the cross unless we're saved. Unless the Holy Spirit has worked in our hearts to give us an understanding of our own wretched depravity. Nothing else in the world to this day will consider you in such a way that has you taking a long look at yourself and understanding there is not enough self-improvement that you can ever do. Everything else in the world is going to talk to you. Every mechanism that's coming towards you and your children and your children's children, God forbid, every mechanism in the world is going to tell you that there's a way we can help you be a better person. The shift in the covenant that Jesus died and by his blood now people have access to the God of gods, that there's no more need for a covenant, a blood sacrifice, that's all been taken care of. What we begin to see, what you should be seeing, is that this is a tremendous, obviously anybody dying for you is a tremendous gift, right? But that God provided it through his perfect son who knew no sin but made him sin so that we could have his righteousness. You begin to see God's right. There is no other way. There's no other way that I could have conscious, true, beautiful contact with God. What do I think I might be able to devise that could get me into the throne room of grace of a holy God? What is it that I think I could stop doing just enough or maybe start doing more of that could entitle me to God's presence? Nothing. And why do you need the Holy Spirit to believe that? Because you have an ego, you have pride, you have vestiges of the flesh still dancing about in you that are always going to whisper you're not that bad. We all do. And there's safety in sort of surrendering, collapsing in the hands of God, with God's people, in covenant with one another and with him, and just finally accepting you can't do anything. You will never be able to do anything. And when I tell you, you're not good enough and you never will be, and you can turn around and point the same finger at me, you're not good enough either, Pastor Craig, and you never will be. And together we say, praise the Lord because we're not and Jesus is. And so we have a mutual acceptance. This is what covenant brings us to. We have a mutual acceptance, a mutual understanding with one another that you're only good enough because Jesus died for you. And so I rejoice in that, knowing who you are, what you've done in your past, and what you might do tomorrow. And you extend, Lord willing, the same grace to me. And we enjoy the freedom of not trying so hard to be good, but seeking to actually experience the freedom of God's grace. What is that? What does it mean for you to be forgiven of your sin all the time? Does that really strike you when you think about this? Does that really strike you in such a way that says to your soul, gosh, I just want to go out and sin a bunch more. After all, I'm forgiven. If you're saved, it absolutely doesn't do that. Because in walking in the gratitude of God's blood, you begin to have joy. You begin to be kinder. You begin to leave your past behind. You begin to judge yourself and other people with a blessed need. Everybody needs Jesus. Everybody needs Jesus. They're a wreck. But what you can't do is you cannot remain in a space of plausible deniability. That dog will not ever hunt. You can't remain in the place of plausible deniability, thinking it might not be true. So I have no business extending the truth and the grace of the gospel to anybody else. If that's the way you see it, then you don't believe it. And you're missing out on the freedom of being forgiven from your sin. And you're probably also in bondage to your own sins. That's what happens to people who maintain a plausible deniability with regard to the gospel. So in verse 11, once again, But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, have come, remember, then through the greater and more perfect tent not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places. Now there's no more holy and most holy. And he did that not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing, thus making sure that you have some plausible deniability. People who don't believe this don't know that he has secured an eternal redemption. This is very temporary. Whatever trials and tribulations you have, whatever difficulties you face day in and day out, you are eternally secured by the blood of Jesus Christ. You are eternally redeemed. The Jewish people had the same hope that someday all of this would have to stop, and all their sacrifices would have to stop. And the writer of the Hebrew letter is telling those people, you have no more room for plausible deniability. Y'all have seen what happened, or you've heard a story. You guys know what our boys the Pharisees and Sadducees did to that dude. You know that they had a grave for him. You know that that grave is empty. You know you ought to stop playing games and acting like you really don't believe it, and you're not so sure, because if you do that, there's no way you can redo your salvation opportunity. There's no way you can get a do-over in terms of what we read in Hebrews in chapter 6. You're not going to be able to come back here and say you didn't know. That's what Hebrews 6 is telling folks. You don't get to say once you know that you didn't know, because once you do that, you have denied, you have done what we call blasphemed the Holy Spirit. Understand the logic. The Holy Spirit is who causes you, causes me, to believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then you say, no, I don't want to believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, you've just said, get away from me, God. I don't want your truth. You've just blasphemed the Holy Spirit. And he will send you on your merry way. We can do all kinds of things. We can have all kinds of struggles. What we don't want to do is deny the truth of the power of the blood of Jesus Christ. There were more clues that Jesus gave and that are found in the New Testament with regard to what Jesus is saying here being true. We remember in Mark 14, 58, the rabbis are giving Jesus the business, and they even know that he said this. They said, we heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another not made with hands, which is what we just read in Hebrews. That's what happened. He is now resurrected in the heavenly temple. He, his temple, he's building the temple here on earth through transformation with the gospel of the human heart so that you're a temple of the Holy Spirit. He's in the temple when it's not made by hands. Happened three days after they killed him. They knew it was coming. I need to be emphatic about this because of things like Acts 20, 28. I should have a 20 there. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church which he obtained with his own blood. Now, going back to the beginning where I was talking about the burden of prophetic ministry, it is not okay for me to desire to build a program and a stage play that attracts people to a great show. The message of the gospel is a bloody mess, and it's intentional. It is for you and I to know every day we don't come here to just feel good about ourselves. We want to feel very good and secure about who Jesus is and what he has done, and therefore we feel good. I don't want you to leave ever with plausible deniability. I don't want you to go out into the world and talk with people of other faiths and religions as if they have the same sort of truth claims that you do, the same power of the blood of the Son of God being spilled out for them to cover them for their sin. No one else claims that. We're not even in the same universe when we're talking to other people from other faiths. You are believing a lie. I'm not. We can talk about that. I can try to prove things to you. I can demonstrate things to you. But I know I'm reserving this in the back of my mind. I don't want to push too hard because, look, it obviously is you don't have the Holy Spirit. God's not knocking on your door. Maybe this conversation just needs to shut down. I just planted a seed, and someone else may have to water it a little bit because what I'm noticing right now is you're not getting it because this simple but very profound message is not complicated. Somehow in your heart you want to believe that it is not necessary for someone to die for you. That's just too much. Somehow you want to believe that your customs are good enough for a holy God. This all comes from, and remember what I'm saying, that the Jews are looking forward to the cross. Just be reminded of what they were instructed in places like Leviticus 16, beginning in verse 14, It's not just a little... It's like there's a... It was a splash of blood. "...and bring his blood inside the veil, and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat. Thus he shall make atonement for the holy place because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions and all their sins. And so he shall do for the tent of meeting that dwells with them in the midst of their uncleannesses." And this was constant. And they knew, like, Lord, this can't go on forever. And there was a promised Messiah. But Lord, this promised Messiah is doing way more than... We thought we were the good... we were the religious people. How are you letting all these guys in? What is your thinking that these Gentiles are as good as we are? They haven't even tried to keep the law. Yeah, that's the whole point. You tried to keep the law for the same reason. They're not even trying to do anything with regard to the law. You think you're good enough in law-keeping. They think they're good enough just existing. It's the same problem, it's just different emphases. We all have the same problem. Somehow we want to not have a holy God be in charge of us. Somehow we want to allow ourselves to believe there's a way around this in his blood, which is the whole point. You should rejoice. I should rejoice in that. The reality that we live in covenant with God is nothing less than radical graciousness. Jesus died. Every human ordinance in the temple was satisfied once and for all. For all eternity, past, present, future. When we say all, we get all, we get the word, we have a sense about all, but we see stacks of dead bodies and we're mortified. We're talking about just infinite almost sin piled up. Think about your lives. Think about the ways in which we disregard God. We're just with such aplomb. We handle our days not being grateful for the fact that we're covered in his blood. Do we understand the extraordinary measures that God has gone to allow us to commune with him? We're reminded in Romans 5, While we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Amen. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. And then, in the Old Testament again, looking forward, Then I said, Behold, I have come. In the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do your will, O my God. Your law is within my heart. The prophecy of Joel, the prophecy in Jeremiah, The Lord will inscribe his law upon the hearts of men. And all that tells us, remembering what the law does, All that does is remind us of how abject our failure is to keep the law. He's written it on your heart. You know you're not good enough. He's written it on my heart. I know I can't do all the things he's called me to do perfectly. I just can't. It's written on my heart. So as to love my neighbor as myself. I don't even know my neighbor. Therefore, back to Hebrews, He is the mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established, for a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. You guys get the concept. But what this is again demonstrating to us and for us is that all that the Jewish people were doing was written out for them by the one who was writing the will for them, letting them know that this is in your will if you behave this way and behave that way, but you know that that will is going to be a will that won't give you much because it doesn't accomplish much, but you also know, because I promised you, I've given you these symbols, I've given you this way of behaving, I've given you these promises, I've done this so that you can know ultimately when the Savior comes, when Yeshua HaMashiach comes, you will know He is God if you have not been blinded, if you are one of the elect. You will know He is God, you will know He is sufficient, and now you will get your inheritance, the same inheritance that we get. In the same way, He sprinkled, let me go back to that for just a moment, I just want you to note too in that that the need for Jesus to die is written for them. The understanding that the Messiah was going to die, to understand that. How do you get your will? How do you receive the benefits of your will? Whoever wrote it has to be dead, right? So what it's saying about who Jesus is is incredible. He's God. John 1, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, right? And Jesus is the Word. So we see this more clearly than many of them did, but this moment is coming true for them before their very eyes. The temple is again about to be destroyed. They're seeing the ransacking of Jerusalem slowly but surely. In the same way, He sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood. And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. So I'm going to ask the worship team to prepare to come up for communion. As they come up, I'm going to continue talking this out a little bit with you. I'm going to ask you, for those of you who take communion, if you're a Christian and you desire to take communion with us, please do. Just start forming a line or just coming up to the table and grabbing the elements that you prefer up here. Go ahead and do that right now. I'm still going to talk. Don't worry. It's okay that you're getting up while I'm talking. Just please go get your elements. Again, back to plausible deniability. Back to the human condition. Back to what people really need. People do not need, not for eternal life, a good self-esteem. People do not need, for eternal life, a bigger paycheck. People do not need, for a relationship with God, to be affirmed in their sin. Every single human being needs to understand deeply that they need to be forgiven of their sin. Do we believe that? Do we regularly see dead people in front of our very eyes that have no clue what's going on before them? And right now, in this world, if we don't preach the gospel, it is not assumed. What people once thought about Christianity and it being out there in the ether, especially in a place like the Silicon Valley, it's not even in the ether. The gospel, unless it's preached, unless it's spoken to, spoken out directly to people, more and more people have no clue that they need to be forgiven of their sin or why. And is our hope for other people to have eternal life? And if our hope is for other people to have eternal life, once again, that's because we have eternal life. If you do not know that you have eternal life, one of the ways that you can tell you have eternal life is that you want to share in the power of Jesus Christ and give God the glory. Because it is the Holy Spirit working in us that causes us to obey the command and go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them the things that God has commanded us and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit working in us that compels us to do such a thing. And the Holy Spirit does such a thing in us because He loves people and He has equipped us with the means of grace to share the gospel. Christians are the means of grace in the world for the gospel to get out. By preaching at church, by equipping you and sending you out, you are equipped to go and share the gospel. And the motivation to share the gospel is an overwhelming motivation of love that overwhelms the fear in you that you might be rejected. No one gets rejected because of plausible deniability. You didn't know, I didn't know, let's just be friends. It is all so mushy. There is no constant. There is no foundation. We live in such a world. And we come here and we like, for a moment, like, yes, I remember. I remember who you are and who I am. I'm thankful. I just wish I could be out there in the world so confidently. What's your perception of being covered in the blood of Jesus Christ? It was a one-time thing for Him. It was a one-time thing for Jesus Christ. You don't get covered in the blood of Jesus Christ one day, take a shower the next day, wait a few days, get covered again. You don't want that. You want to understand, and I want to understand, that constantly God is looking at me and looking at you, and He's only able to look at me, and He's only able to look at you because I am covered in the blood of Jesus Christ right now and always. He is up there having satisfied all of the demands of God. And so I don't want to push that away, get that out of my mind. It's too icky. I want to appreciate, thank, welcome the fact that I am in desperate need of the blood of Jesus Christ. Lord willing, so do you. And so as we think about that for a moment, just take a moment, remembering that though there is no one righteous, no, not one, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We know this. And so in our gratitude and our realization of this, this framework is up here for you to just take a look at for a couple of minutes. You don't have to say this, but maybe it will help you as you meditate on your need for a Savior, on your gratitude for a Savior. Think about the things that you've done and not done. As we close with great hope and joy. Who else do I know and love that needs you? Who is it that I haven't been praying for? In what ways do I abandon my responsibilities to your covenant? In what ways do I hoard my blessings? In what ways do I ignore other people? In what ways, Lord, show me my heart. Show me where I've been caught up in the wrong things. Show us, Lord, where it is that you promise to build your church. Show us our lane. Help us to stay in our lane. Help us to be a people who are victorious and walk in our victory, not in our shame. We can do that because of what you've done. So, family, hear the good news. Christ died for us. Christ rose for us. Christ reigns in power for us. Christ prays for us. Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation. The old life has gone and a new has begun. Believe the good news of the gospel. In Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. Together we say, thanks be to God. We take the bread that represents the broken body of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And we take of this symbolic gesture, understanding what it means, the necessity of the blood of Jesus Christ. That he died a real death in my stead, in our steads, Lord. We thank you that he took upon himself the punishment that we so justly deserve. Amen.