Father God, thank you again for bringing us here. Thank you again for the opportunity to study your word, to discuss it, to apply it to our lives. Father, we're just so grateful for all you do for us in this topic this morning, the death of Christ and what it means to us. Father, help us to see it clearly in your words. And Father, we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, we're continuing our study in the great hymns of Christianity, and we reach another awesome hymn here, The Fountain Filled with Blood. And we're going to go through this with our usual outline of looking at the hymn itself, then the writer and the composer, the story behind the hymn, the theological truths. And we'll look at some application experiences that we have with this hymn. And so we're going to talk a little bit about a guy we've already discussed, a guy named William Cooper. And we're going to go a little bit more into detail of his life this morning. So let's look at the hymn first. I'd like to start there. Let me grab a copy. All right. I've got to share. We'll share. There we go. We're good. Thank you. All right, so let's go through the hymn together. Let's go through the hymn together and we'll look at this. This is William Cooper's great hymn. Let's go through it. So we're gonna read it out loud. So there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins. And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. Lose all their guilty stains. Lose all their guilty stains. And sinners plunged beneath the blood lose all their guilty stains. So you notice right off the bat, he has an introduction statement, and then there'll be kind of the main thing he wants to get, and he repeats it over and over. So each verse will have a similar layout. So verse two, the dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day, and there have I, though vile as him, washed all my sins away. And then he repeats, washed all my sins away, all the way through it. So verse three, ere since by faith I saw the stream, thy flowing wounds supply, redeeming love has been my theme and shall be till I die. Again, we see this and shall be till I die, pointing back to that redeeming love theme in verse three. Then verse four, then in a nobler, sweeter song, I'll sing thy power to save when this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave. Go on to verse five, dear dying lamb by precious blood shall never lose its power till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more. There's actually a sixth verse. We'll talk about that a little bit later. But those are the main ones, the five that you typically see in the Trinity Hymnal. So we're gonna get into all that, but let's quick review of Mr. Cooper. Looks like Calper, but it's pronounced Cooper. All right, so let's look at him real quick. Daniel did a great job introducing Cooper to us. We're going to dive a little bit deeper into there. So English poet and Anglican hymn writer. He was the fourth child of British clergyman and his wife, and she died giving birth to the fifth child, his younger brother, and prior to his birth, the three siblings that were born before him die. This is pretty common back in those days that over 50% of the children that were born in that day died before they were five years old. And we see this very similarly in his life, where his mother dies when he was six, giving birth to the fifth child in that family. So, of course, as a young boy, he was devastated by a loss. And he got sent, unfortunately, to a boarding school where he was terrorized by bullies that kind of shattered his nerves. So you can see his father's in a difficult position. He has a new infant. The mother has died. And you have a six-year-old boy. And you can see why he probably ended up in this boarding school. But it was devastating for him. And the fact that he was probably abused in this boarding school. So as he gets a little bit older, he's moved away from the boarding school to a place that's very interesting, to Westminster. So this is a terrible picture, and I'm sorry our little screen makes it kind of fuzzy. But what you see in the background back there in Westminster, what is that? So you have the school, and in the background, You see Westminster Abbey, don't you? So this thing's pretty old. The Westminster School that he actually attended was founded by the monks in England in the 11th century. And this school, Westminster School, has been a public school since 1560. So it's a pretty old school. And so that's the school he ends up at. after he leaves the boarding school. And there he develops a love for literature and poetry and shows himself to be a fairly decent poet and writer. And so he falls in love with that writing while he's at Westminster. So his father wanted him to be an attorney. But while he was studying for the bar exam, and what's interesting to note here Because he goes through being an assistant after he graduates from Westminster. He goes to be an assistant for almost 10 years in the law. And then when he gets ready to take his law exam, his bar, he kind of over panics a little bit. And he gets to where he believes that he can't do it. And anxiety overcomes him, which is a common theme for Mr. Cooper, unfortunately. And he actually believed he was damned. He threw away his Bible, and he attempted suicide. And so this was instrumental that God did this to him as he goes through this thing, as you'll see how he comes to faith and understanding this through this attempted suicide. So he's placed in the care of this guy, a guy named Nathaniel Cooper. This is Dr. Cooper. He was a Christian doctor, and he actually ran an asylum called Collegium Insanium, which in our words means a sane asylum. So he's running this, but he's a Christian guy running it. And so you can see here this interesting as we look at some of these things and we see the Christian-ness of these men throughout this study of hymns, how it shows up in everything that they do. And this doctor is no exception. As he ministers and literally does his profession, he keeps his Christendom in mind, and he lives it out before Mr. Cooper. Actually, in this asylum, there were Bibles that these guys that were struggling with these things like depression could read, and it made a huge difference in his life. So under Dr. Cotton's care, he slowly recovered. But what's interesting to note is in this recovery, he becomes regenerated by the Holy Spirit in 1764. And so look, he's in his 30s now. And so it's interesting, he reads the story of Lazarus one day, picks up a Bible that's on a bench at the asylum, and he starts to read the story of Lazarus. And what's interesting is he sees Christ's mercy in the way that he dealt with Lazarus and he sees this mercy from his Savior and so then he turns to Romans 3.25 and he reads that. So let me read that because I know you guys will turn to it anyway. So Romans 3.25, Jesus Christ, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, keep that in mind because that's going to be the theme of what we're talking about this morning, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because of His divine forbearance as He had passed over former sins. Cooper wrote about this moment And he says, it was upon reading this verse that he wrote this. He says, the full beams of the sun of righteousness, S-U-N, shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of the atonement, another key word we're going to talk about this morning, that he made for me. My pardon sealed in his blood and all the fullness and completeness of his justification. So you see him looks at the mercy that's shown to Lazarus as he raises him from the dead. He sees the love of God for Jesus, for his friend Lazarus. He goes to Romans and he sees this and he says, this is incredible. He sees atonement. He sees the blood of Christ and his meaning. And that's what we're going to talk about this morning. And so you see how God used this truth in his life to bring him to understand who Christ was as his Savior and Lord. So even though he would continue to struggle with depression his entire life, he now had the rock of Christ to stand on. And we see this in his hymn writing, and we see it in his relationships that he forms as he moves from his 30s as he goes on the rest of his life. And so we're going to see his Christian foundation. So then he meets this woman and her husband. This is Mary Unwin. And so when he got out of the asylum, providence of God would have it that he met Morley and Mary Unwin. And Morley was a Calvinist pastor. And so his wife is shown here in this painting. Now, if you notice, she's pointing to something. There's a lot of debate of what she's pointing to. Unfortunately, you can't really see, but in the background, there's two churches. And one of them is believed to be the church in Unley, where Newton was the pastor. And that becomes significant for both of them as what happens. So anyway, after he comes out of the asylum, Cooper's invited to the Unwin's home, and he ends up living with them for 22 years. And so they kind of take care of him, and they develop a very deep relationship with him, where he really considers her his mother, which makes sense, right? He lost his mother when he was six, and he becomes very attached to Mary. Unfortunately, Morley, Mary's husband dies in a riding accident. And so this shifts things for Mr. Cooper and for her as she decides to leave their home where they had lived and they move to Unley, England where of course John Newton is preaching. And so she wants to go sit under his preaching and she brings William with her. And so William develops a very deep relationship with Newton, and Newton recognizes his struggle with depression and anxiety. And as part of that, he also recognizes that Newton's a very gifted writer and poet. And so as Newton's putting together his hymnal, he asks Cooper to write some hymns for him. And in that, we see there's a fountain. That's the one we were looking at today. We've already looked at God Moves in Mysterious Ways. Those were two of the hymns that were among those that were written by Cooper for Newton's hymnal. And so Cooper, interestingly, went on to write poetry. in England became very well known and he also contributed to Newton and of course you remember that guy Wilberforce in England. He became very influential in helping both those men to abolish slavery in England. So again we see their Christendom in how they go about what they believed and how they interacted with their society as he understood what this blood of Christ meant to him. All right. So let's look at this hymn, just a quick history of it. It was originally titled Praise for the Fountain Opened. And I think when you look at that, you understand what he's doing, why he says there's praise for that fountain. And it was his 15th hymn included in Newton's hymnal. Now, I found this interesting. There were alterations that were made to this hymn back in the 1800s and the alterations were not good ones and so the idea was to remove the graphic nature out of the hymn and add a more Armenian slant to it, in other words a more man-centered thing and you know they changed the word like I have was changed to may sinners in other words They're they're trying to remove the graphic nature of Christ's blood and the atonement that is necessary for our salvation take that away and replace it more with this idea of that men can choose God and that they're really not that bad. And so this hymn was changed and sung by some of the guys in these Reformation movements that were more trying to whip people into a frenzy and not really having them understand the true nature of the gospel. And so there was a magazine called The Gospel Magazine, which was a reform magazine still in existence today, I read an article in it in 1867 that was written where they were lamenting the fact that the Americans had taken this hymn and had altered it. And they said, we've got enough Armenianism over here, we don't need that brought over here as well. And so it's interesting that we see these guys trying to do it. As a matter of fact, a lot of the Armenians will stop at verse 4, they won't even go into verse 5. There is an additional verse that's not typically in there that was part of the original hymn. Let's look at it. And it goes along with the theme that you see that Cooper's doing as he is building kind of a crescendo of understanding the blood in this fountain and its importance. And then he gets to the end as kind of a, this is the whole point that he's trying to get to. And read these words, very interesting. It says, Lord, I believe thou hast prepared, unworthy though I be, for me a blood bought, very important to understand that blood bought, free reward, a golden harp for me. And then he talks about the harp. He says, tis strong and tuned for endless years and formed by power divine, he's pointing everything back to God, "'Tis to sound in God the Father's ears, no other name but thine." Very interesting when you look at that and you see what he's talking about. He's saying, you know, my whole life is gonna be a music back to you that points to Christ all the time. And that's what he's really saying here, that this harp that's been given to him, he plays for the Father's ears to point back to Christ. And so, interesting that we don't sing it probably because, you know, I mean, we get bored with five verses, six would really make us go nuts, I guess. So anyway, very interesting sixth verse that was part of the original. All right, so let's go on to the music of the hymn, and this is fascinating. So in the Trinity Hymnal, we have a music written by Lowell Mason in 1830. And so that is known as, he titled it Fountain. And Lowell is a very interesting guy. He was a Christian music director, but also he was a banker in the 19th century. And he went on to compose over 1,600 hymn tunes. He composed the music for Joy to the World, Near My God to Thee, and also Mary Had a Little Lamb. That was him. So, yeah, you didn't know that was a Christian song, did you? All right, so, and he's credited with introducing music to the American public schools. Very influential guy. with music. All right, so now we're going to get to some interesting stuff talking about the theological significance of this hymn. And this is the heart where I really want to focus this morning. So in the Trinity Hymnal it's broken up into major sections, and this section is under Jesus Christ and it says His death. And so what we're going to look at this morning is this question. He answers it. Why did Jesus have to die? And this is very important for us in today's society because much of the church doesn't understand this very question. A lot of the more liberal churches and some of the churches that have more of an Armenian bent tend to be man-centered focused instead of Christ-centered focused. And this reason for Jesus' death is super important for us to understand because it is the basis of the gospel. If we don't understand this piece, if we get it wrong, we're going to get the gospel wrong. And we're seeing it really worldwide as you see people who take Jesus and they talk about him in terms that we go, I don't understand what they're talking about. And I'm going to give you some examples of that here in a second. But this question, why did he have to die? Why couldn't God just look down on us and say, you know, you guys are sinners, but I just love you, so I'm gonna forgive you. Why is that wrong? Why is that not scriptural? Because he needs to enact justice. Okay, so now we're getting to those tricky words like justice. So great answer. So we're going to see this as we look at the scripture, that Jesus's death was more than just a tragedy. And Jesus was more than just a figure that came to people who were in sin and loved them. He had to die for them in order to do what? What was the righteousness needed for? What's the whole purpose of Christ coming to earth? What was it? Let's get down to the basics. What was the whole purpose? In order to do what Atone and to do what what's God trying to do that we lost in the fall? Bingo, right there, have relationship with God. God is moving in such a way as to restore relationship with us and staying within his character of holiness and righteousness. And so we're going to see here when we look at this atonement why it is necessary. You know, this trite idea that when anybody messes up we're just to forgive them and move on, this is not God. This is a man-centered theology that's messing the church up. I'm going to get into that a little bit more this morning. But this idea that God can just overlook our sins, That it's no big deal. God's a big God. He just loves everybody. I'm just going to overlook the sins. Does really damage to his character. And the character traits that we understand that we just mentioned. Righteousness. Justice. These things are important for us to understand. Holiness. So, you know, why does the Bible say the beginning of wisdom is what? fear of God. So what are we talking about when we say fear of God here? So these are the things we're going to understand when we look at this. It's not this trembling horrible fear, yet it is, but it's so much more than that. It's an understanding of why Jesus had to die. Because if we don't understand this concept, we will miss the gospel. And we will end up where, you guys have heard me say it before, we'll end up in what I call the be nice gospel, or what some people are calling social gospel. And we're going to talk about how we're seeing that in today's world quite a bit. So, this is why I say much of the evangelical church today calls us to have a relationship with Jesus and all but ignores the cross and its significance. The significance of the cross is our sin. And when we fail to understand what atonement means in this gospel, we will miss the gospel. and it leads us into some bad places. So remember, a gospel without the cross is not good news, because it leaves us still in our sin. And this is important for us to understand. In order to be reconciled to a holy and righteous God, something must be done to atone for our sin. He cannot just overlook it. And so when we start doing these things of God just loves you, and we start ignoring sin, we end up in some really bad places that are not gospel-centric. And at best, it leads to antinomianism. That's anti-law. In other words, the law doesn't apply to me. And at worst, it's a false gospel. And I would say we're trending here quite a bit in the church today. We see it in some of the Christian response to some ugliness that came across in the Olympics this weekend, and I'm going to talk about that. All right, so keep this in mind. In order to be restored in fellowship to our creator, we must be cleansed from our sin and impurity. You will not stand before God unless he sees you as holy. And you're not going to do anything to make yourself holy. It's all through Christ. So we must understand the significance of atonement. So atonement for sin must be made, and it is God who provides the means, and we'll see that as we go through the scriptures. In Zechariah, we're gonna see this. Come on, a lot of scripture here. All right, so Zechariah 13.1, on that day, there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanliness. So it's interesting, you see this, going back to our hymn, you see this idea of God cleansing us with a fountain and it's going to be opened for the house of David. We see the same kind of language in Ezekiel. He says, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your unrighteousness and from all your idols I will cleanse you. Do you see the words here that God is using? He is taking his people and cleansing them. There's something got to happen. Our sins must be paid for and you must be cleansed to stand before God in relationship with Him. Any other means of approaching God is going to end up in not the gospel. You're damned. We must understand this as we look further into atonement. So let's dive in deep. So every verse in this hymn is straight from the Bible. The theme of this hymn is the grateful response for atonement of our sins. I want to say that again. The theme of this hymn is the grateful response for the atonement of our sins. So atonement is a restoration of a broken relationship and giving satisfaction for the wrongs that have been done. Your sins are rebellion against God. They are an affront to God. They are things that God cannot overlook. If He does, He wouldn't be a righteous and holy God. So He says, I love my people, and I'm gonna do something that I'm gonna do that's going to create this atonement. And this is, of course, we see in Christ's work for us. But He does not ever overlook our sin. You know, the cross is meaningless if we have a God that overlooks sin. So scripture says that we've offended our creator, whose nature is to hate sin. Well, wait a minute, I thought God was a loving God. He doesn't hate anything. Well, read your scriptures. God hates a lot of stuff, and the thing he hates most is this sin and evil. And God hates it so much that he has to take his wrath out on his own son. So we either stand in the righteousness of Christ at the judgment day, or we stand by ourselves. And so the wrath is either paid for by Christ or you get to pay it. And so sin is never overlooked. It's not punished. So look at Psalm 4, 4 through 6. You are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. Evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers. That's an interesting comment, because all we normally hear is that God just loves everything and everybody. And while that is true, He loves His creation, He does not love evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies, the lure of whores, the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. This is very stark language that we see here. But when you compare it to what had to happen for us to be atoned, a fountain filled with blood, you see the seriousness of what we're talking about this morning. So the Bible also says, does God hate sin and is going to punish it, but there's no way to establish our own righteousness. We have no way in our own selves to make it right with our creator. We see this in Job, we see it in Isaiah, and we also see it in Romans. Let me read Romans here, Romans 2-3. For I bear witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own way, they did not submit to God's righteousness. I would submit to you that when we tell people that God just loves them and we ignore the atonement, we're basically giving them something that says, you can come to God. He doesn't really care. You just have to accept this undying love of God for you and you're good to go. It is a false gospel to do that. And we're seeing it in our society as people define what it means to be a Christian. You know, my mother-in-law, who died recently, had a view of Christianity that was be nice. She never spoke about Christ. She never spoke about atonement. She never spoke about sin. But she did and was very harsh, especially on Christians, who she said were just mean. And anytime we spoke the truth about things like sin, homosexuality, all these things that are going on in our society right now, she became very upset because she said, well, those are just those mean Christians. That is throughout our world right now. Why is Christianity so much under attack by the world? Because when we speak the truth about sin, people look at that and say, that's just mean. Well, where does this come from? Even Christians themselves are saying it. If you went online and read some of the comments this weekend, I'm like, We're missing the whole point of the atonement when we sit there and say, I want to tolerate everything. I'm just so loving as a Christian that I'm going to tolerate even evil and wickedness and not actually deal with it in a truthful and loving way for those who are espousing this benign gospel. So let's keep going. So God himself provides the atonement that sin has made necessary. He said that again, God provides the atonement that sin has made necessary. So when we look at the Bible, the amazing grace is the focus of biblical faith. From Genesis to Revelation, we see God's amazing grace. From the very moment that man falls in the garden, God shows up with grace. Remember, he said, you're going to die. And then he shows up and shows grace to man and says, yeah, you're going to die, but not right now. And then he promises a savior. From Genesis all the way to Revelation, we see this amazing grace. And this is what we need to keep in mind when we speak the truth to our society today, that we speak this, not this tolerance gospel. We speak this gospel that said sin is bad and God's going to punish it, but I've got great news for you. He paid the price on the cross for your sin. And if you will in faith believe in that, then you will be saved. But when we said to people, eh, sin stuff's not that big a deal. He just loves you. We're really preaching a false gospel. All right, let's keep going. Jesus' death on the cross atoned for our sins. We see that in Romans, all through Romans here. So let's read Romans 3, 25 through 26. Jesus, whom God put forth, big word coming, as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith, This was to show God's righteousness because of his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ. Man, there's so much in here that you see about the truth of the gospel and the atonement that Christ has. You see God coming forward and saying a propitiation. What's a propitiation? What does that mean? What's a propitiation? Turn aside wrath substitute is basically I'm saying I'm gonna take this sin problem you got and I'm gonna punish it on this over here So we have this propitiation Christ propitiated our sin on the cross because God took his wrath out on Christ so this is the propitiation you see a propitiation by what his blood and Jesus's death is not a surprise to God. God, remember we talked about this in the, you know, the covenant in the Godhead where all three persons within the Trinity come together for our salvation and they all work it. God says I'm going to accept what the Son does, and the Son and the Father then send the Holy Spirit to apply it to us. So we see this working of salvation, but it starts with this propitiation by Christ living the perfect life, becoming the perfect sacrifice, and then His blood is what washes your sin away. So we see this all through it. Let's keep going here. So Christ's blood was shed as a sacrifice. So let's go back to these verses. Christ's blood shed as a sacrifice. That's the fountain of forgiveness. So when you think about this, you're plunged beneath this fountain of blood that's coming from the cross. So imagine you got a fountain. At the top of the fountain is the cross. And what's pouring out of the cross is Christ's blood into the fountain of which you are plunged beneath. So it's very graphic. And it's the bloody cross. It's this idea that the bloody cross is needed because our sin is that bad. And you see the love of God saying, I'm gonna get my own son to pay your price so that you may stand before me righteous in his blood. And so the graphic nature of this hymn is perfect for us. We must understand, we should never push it away and say, that's a little too graphic for me. I don't want that holy cross thing. I just like that hippie Jesus on the beach deal. That's not the gospel. Alright, so Christ redeemed His people by means of a ransom. His death was the price that freed us from the guilt and from enslavement to sin. We see this in Romans, Galatians, Colossians. So we see in this next verse, save to sin no more. So, you know, when we look at Christ's work of atonement, that's the significance that gets rid of our sin. But then you see Cooper go on to say, we're saved to sin no more. And what's he saying there? He's saying now we have the power of the Holy Spirit live in us that changes us. It moves us away from our sin. This is also important. God doesn't just love you and then let you stay in your sin. He gives you the power to move you away from it. This is what sanctification's all about. So again, we're hitting some big theological terms here. We got atonement, now we're bringing in sanctification, but you see Cooper is pointing back to him, save to sin no more. Okay, number three, in Christ's death, God reconciles him to himself, overcoming his own hostility that our sins provoked. So we see that God loves us so much, why? He's trying to reconcile us to himself. and this is his power to save. We have nothing that we bring to the table in this theological truth that God saves us. We bring nothing. We're only plunged beneath the blood is all we are. And so we gotta understand that. So when we pray for people, it's not that we pray that they have a relationship with Jesus. Of course I want that. We all should want that. But more importantly, I pray that the Holy Spirit would change their heart and open their eyes to see the truth of what we're talking about here, that they're sinners in need of a Savior and that Savior came. And so this truth helps us to understand how we should then interact with our society. So let's keep going. He suffered as a substitute with the damning record of our transgression nailed by God to his cross as a list of crimes for which he died. So he's on the cross, not for anything he did, completely innocent, he's on the cross because of what we did. Jews didn't put him on the cross, we did. Romans didn't put him on the cross, we did. God from eternity says, I know my people and I'm going to put my son on the cross to pay the price for their sins and I'm gonna pour my wrath out on him so it doesn't get poured out to us. What a beautiful picture of this idea of redeeming love. Think about that. This is it, redeeming love. This is what we want for the world. We want them to understand redeeming love, not hippie Jesus. Redeeming love shall be our theme and shall be till we die. Think about redeeming love, what it does for us. This is the truth of the scripture that's coming out boldly to us in this atonement. To understand that Christ went to the cross on our behalf to atone for our sins, and it was necessary. We understand the fear of God to be, I'm a sinner and I need a savior. When we don't talk to people that way, we run into problems with how we even view God. So many Christians this weekend, after the abomination in the Olympics, where they took da Vinci's beautiful painting of the Last Supper and completely mocked it with transgenders and homosexuals and threw it up there, I was astounded by some of the things that Christians said. They weren't appalled by it. They wanted to just love. They did this number. Let me read you one of the posts. It's very interesting. I'm going to paraphrase it. So it went something like this. Jesus just loved everyone. And what we're trying to show in this picture, by the way, that depiction of the abomination of what happened at the Lord's Supper, that wasn't the first time it's happened. In 1989, there was a picture that was put out by a woman who said, this is how Jesus really loves people. And in that picture, she removed everybody who was an apostle and placed in all sorts of sexual deviants. Matter of fact, even had Christ in high heels. And so we had, and it was very controversial at the time, wasn't in America, was overseas in Europe. And so what we see in this is this idea. that Jesus just loves so much everyone in the world, we don't really care about sin, that what would really happen today if he had his Lord's Supper would be that he would welcome all sinners in and they would be friends of Jesus. This is an abomination to God's character when we think this way. And I'm not saying God doesn't love sinners, of course he does because he gave his son But name me one time in the scriptures where Jesus encounters someone who is a sinner and doesn't confront the sin. You won't find it. So this idea that we have this hippie brother that doesn't care about what we do, just loves us, just forgives us, is not the gospel. And when churches teach this, it is a false gospel. And I think we're going to a point where we'll even accept it, where tolerance becomes the most important thing for us. We just have to get along with everybody. I don't want to be considered that I'm mean. I don't want people to think I'm mean. And so I'm just going to let it all go. And so we start talking about abortion in terms of things like, well, it's women's health. Okay. Or transgenderism. God just loves those people. And so they accept everything about it. And so we turn the Lord's Supper with his apostles into this gross distortion of the Christ's love for people. And we even start talking about things like, well, Jesus came to save the oppressed. And so now we start moving into things like liberation theology that's just a gross distortion of what the beauty of this, this redeeming love, we distort it. And we make it so that it's just nothing like Christianity. And it confuses people. We start posting stuff about how we just love everybody and you're thinking, well, why do we even have the cross? What was the point? Instead of saying your sin has been taken care of, But you can't stay in it. God doesn't leave us in our sin. He moves us. He moves us and sanctifies us, but He got on the cross to pay for it. So when we start doing these things where we start ignoring sin in our gospel and we start talking about Jesus's love, and I'm putting in scare quotes there, instead of truth and love and the other things that we look at in the character of God, we completely distort the gospel and we do things that are just gross. I'm not shocked that the pagan world mocks Christianity. We're gonna see that. It's just gonna keep getting worse because we're getting more and more pagan. So we shouldn't be shocked by that. But we should have more of a feeling like David. Remember David's response as he was being mocked by Goliath, as the army of the living God was being mocked by Goliath? It's a great story and we should take comfort in this. Now here's this probably 14 to 16 year old shepherd kid, ruddy kid, pretty tough. He'd killed lions and bears, by the way, protecting his sheep. And so he shows up at his brother's and they're He's coming to visit them and they're fighting the Philistines and there's this giant man of a warrior there, Goliath. And Goliath's mocking God's army. And they're all hiding. And Goliath is like, come on, who's gonna fight me? You guys are wimps. And he's mocking God. And David's like, what are we doing? What's going on? So David goes out and gives a little speech. You guys remember his speech to Goliath? It's one of the, it's astounding. He's probably two and a half feet shorter than Goliath. He walks out there and he says, he says, Yates paraphrase, he says, who are you to mock the Most High God? And then he says, and by the way, at the end of today, I'm gonna kill you, I'm gonna cut off your head, and I'm gonna kill all those Philistine warriors over there. And you gotta know that Goliath's standing there looking at him like, really? Next thing he knows, about two minutes later, his head's being chopped off. And what does David do? He stands up at the head and he holds it up to the Philistines. He says, there. And who does he give the credit to? He turns and said, this is God. This is the God we serve. He cuts off the head of that evil, wicked Philistine. It's okay for us to feel indignant about mockery of God. God will not be mocked. people will reap what they sow. And so when I look at those people that did that, it's not that I hate them. It's that I look at them and I say, I feel sorry for you because as you mock God, you will stand in judgment before him. And what we really want people to understand is God's not going to be mocked. He did this. He redeemed love on the cross, atonement. You see how powerful that love is. It's a love that changes people. It's not a sticky sentimentalism as Matron called it. It's a true love of God that says, I hate sin, but I love you so much I'm giving you my son. And if you'll turn in faith, I'll change you. and I'll pardon you and you will become adopted sons and daughters of God. That's the beautiful story of the gospel. When we eliminate atonement, there's no good story there. It's just making us feel good. You know, it's almost like this idea of secularism that Christianity has. There's no neutrality with God. You see it, it's either one or the other. You're either redeemed in the blood of Christ or you are condemned. This idea that secularism somehow is like neutral to God, that man's neutral and he can make a choice, that's nowhere in the scripture. You're either saved by the blood or you're damned. So secularism is another one of these myths that I think Christians tell ourselves about people who don't believe in God as being, well, they're still good people. They're damned people. That's what they are. And we should be speaking about this redeeming love to everyone we know. because they will stand condemned before God. And then that sentimentality that we gave them is going to mean nothing. So anyway, I love this hymn because it's so poignant in its description of what Christ did. It should be graphic. We should understand the graphic nature of the crucifixion. It wasn't a tragedy. God knew exactly what he was doing. And we see that blood flowing from his veins to a fountain that we're plunged underneath in order to get the atonement for our sins. It is a beautiful story of redeeming love. I'll stop there. You guys, give me some comments, feedback. I know we hit a lot of stuff today. I forgot the name of the company. I didn't say that, by the way, but there was a human company that pulled all their advertising Yeah, it was one of the cell providers, cell phone provider. Ceasefire. Ceasefire. Yeah, pulled their advertising, which is good. I mean, I like to see companies that stand up, at least defend Christianity a little bit. Don't expect a lot of that, though. Other thoughts? How about at Firebrands in the back? I don't know. It's pretty good. OK, good. That's good. You know, don't let. Because in a way, that's looked upon as becoming the mean-spirited church lady. And instead, understanding that we've been redeemed, that this love cost Jesus so much, then that's to affect our daily walk. Everything that happens to us is to sanctify us, to make us more like Jesus. And otherwise, we just turn from that and just say, oh, well, you know, I'll just be a nice girl. I'll be a nice person. As opposed to saying, Lord, I want to be holy. I want to pursue you. It's a great point, Sherri. When you think about when we respond to somebody without the truth of the gospel, and we say, Jesus just loves you, what we're doing is saying, I'm more loving than God. Because I'm going to accept you in your sin. Jesus didn't do that with us, but yet that's what we want to do with society. Society's fine. God will just forgive them. I'm so loving that I just love what you're doing instead of saying, man, I do love you, and I'm going to tell you the truth of this redeeming love. But this takes bravery. This is a God-centered thing, not a man-centered thing. We shrink back in fear of most men because we don't want to tell them the truth about where they are in relationship to a holy and righteous God. But we have such a great story to tell. This is what's going to change the world. It ain't going to be in conservatism or whatever. This is what's changing the world, redeeming love. And it's always been that way. You go back and look at the history of Western civilization, that is what changed the world. You know, where morality and religion were brought together under one thing and said, it is this, it is Christ, it is his redeeming love. And there's a basis for all that we do based on that. not based on this idea of just being nice to everybody. The pagans are not going to walk in a way that is honoring to God ever. And we have to understand that. So our neutrality is a false idea too. I was just going to say in Romans 8, one of my favorite verses is, you know, when he's contrasting the life controlled by the sinful nature, and then the life controlled by the spirit. It's followed with, therefore, brothers, we have an obligation. And it is to live according to the spirit. And I think sometimes we just forget that. We have an obligation. It's true. And also, I think of in 1 Corinthians where Paul is admonishing the Corinthians for their sin. He's talking to church people. And he says to them, it's to your shame that people in your midst don't know who God is. See, your shame. As he's going through all the sins that the church was doing. And he says, it's to your shame. You know, this isn't hippie Jesus. He's calling you to righteousness. Paul is saying, this is the true righteous God. And you cannot allow these things to be among you. It's to our shame. You know, if you want to see where we really are, in a lot of these churches, go back and look at Ezekiel 16 today. Read that chapter, how Ezekiel addresses the church, which is Israel at the time. And it's like reading about the church today. And look at what he says about it. He uses the word whore about a bazillion times in there. And he's talking about the church, how she whored herself out to all these man-centered ideas. And how God is calling them back, and in the same passage He says, I'm the one that's going to, by the way, fix the problem. But He calls out their sin, the church's sin. in intermingling with everyone else, and we have to be so careful with that. I'm not saying go raise pitchforks and go nuts, but you have to have at least some indignation when you see our God that is mocked, and be able to speak in truth the redeeming love of who Christ is, and point them back to that, and say, of course I'm offended by what you did because that's the most righteous and holy God that I serve, and it offends me that you're doing those things. But at the same time, I'll call you to repent of that sin, and Christ will pay your sins, too. So that's my encouragement. I don't want to be a big downer on the world's going to hell. If you're not in Christ, it is. But we have the redeeming love of Christ that is the good news. And that's what makes the gospel the good news. Otherwise, it's nothing. Alright, let me wrap this up in prayer and keep this in mind when we sing this song today. It's the last hymn we're going to sing. Think about what is going on when you visualize this fountain filled with blood and you're the sinner plunged underneath it. And you should come out of that plunging going, praise God that he atoned for my sin. He loved me so much to do that for me. Father God, thank you again for the atoning work of Christ. Thank you for the theme of redeeming love through the scriptures. Thank you that you love us so much that you'd speak the truth to us about our condition. And you showed us your love and the fact that you were willing to sacrifice your son on our behalf. And Father, we're just so grateful that not only are we forgiven, not only do we stand righteous before you, but we're back in fellowship with you and that you give us the strength to push back sin. You give us a place to take the sin that we still do and bring it to the foot of the cross. And father, you consider us adopted sons and daughters and that we get the inheritance of eternal life. Father, what a beautiful picture of this redeeming love you have for us. And Father, we're so grateful for it, and we ask that you would help us to be bold in speaking the truth to a world that is dying and lost. And we pray all this in Christ's name, amen.