Thank you for directing your internet connection to this sermon audio page for Christ Orthodox Presbyterian Church. You can learn more about ChristOPC by visiting our website at www.christopcatl.org. ChristOPC meets for worship each Sunday at 11 a.m. and 5.30 p.m. Let us pray together. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. And Lord, tonight it is your name that we come to glorify and to extol, to magnify among man. Lord, it is your name that we seek and your name that we long for. Tonight, Lord, may we not seek any other name but the name which is above. Lord, we pray this evening that your word, as we just sang, would fill us tonight and that you would renew us by the power of your word and through the power of your spirit. Lord, we know that you work in this manner, and so we come with full confidence that by your word you grow your church. And it's in the name of our Savior that we pray. Amen. Well, after an 11 month hiatus, we are finally finishing the book of Zephaniah. So if you would open up to Zephaniah chapter three, we will be looking at for our sermon text this evening, verses 18 to 20, but I will go ahead and begin reading up in verse 14. That way we have our context. So our sermon or our passage for reading this evening, Zephaniah three verses 14 to 20. So hear now the holy and inspired word of your God. Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O Israel. Rejoice and exult with all your hearts, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away the judgments against you. He has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst. You shall never again fear evil. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, fear not, O Zion, let not your hands grow weak. The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty warrior who saves. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will be quiet in his love. He will exult over you with loud singing. And then our sermon text. I will gather those of you who mourn for the festival so that you will no longer suffer reproach. Behold, at that time, I will deal with all your oppressors, and I will save the lame and gather the outcasts, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time, I will bring you in. At that time, when I gather you together, for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord endures forever. The great playwright William Shakespeare posed the question, what is a name? Now you all know how he answered that question, but I imagine a number of readers would say, well, there's actually quite a bit in a name. And I imagine if you're reading your Bible, especially the Old Testament, you would answer the same thing as well, that names bear a significance to them. They are important, aren't they? Think of the name Abraham, changed from Abram, Abraham meaning the father of many, tying him together with the promises that the Lord had given him. His name is significant. The name means something to him. It means the promises of God to him. Well, in a very different way, I think names bear a striking significance for people today as well. And I mean it in a very different way, because names, or perhaps the pursuit of your name, is one of the main ideas behind our own proud self-exaltation. Think of a household name, for example. A household name is a name, as it indicates, that is known in every household. A name that is so prominent that if you said it, everybody in the room would know who you are talking about. In past generations, those names might be few. It might be the president. It might be some very powerful political person or perhaps a general in an army. Someone like Julius Caesar or Joe Biden or a name of this sort. But today, household names are increasing, aren't they? With the advent of the internet and social media and YouTube and whoever knows what other platforms people have, it has become as simple as the push of a button to seek to exalt your own name in the households across the world, to be a so-called influencer among the culture. See, the ability to pursue your own name has been around since the dawn of the fall. But today, I fear that it's an even greater danger for us in the modern world. It is even easier for us to give in to that base sin of pride, to seek our own name, to seek our own success, to seek our own popularity, to seek our own glory, for us to be the household name among those who are around us, to exalt our own names rather than the name of the Lord. See, this spiritual quality is, I believe, the foundational spiritual sense of fallen man. In fact, Adam, whenever he partook of that fruit of the tree, what was he trying to do besides exalt his own name over the name of the Lord? To gain the blessing of a fruit, a meal, without submitting to God's rules on how to eat in the garden. Or perhaps the main example that you all know from the Bible in pursuing your own name, the Tower of Babel. What did the people of Babel seek to do but to, as Genesis 11 verse 4 says, make for themselves a name? See, the people of Babel, in their city-building, tower-constructing project, sought to exalt themselves rather than submit themselves to the Lord of Heaven. If you remember from all those many months ago, the book of Zephaniah has a lot to say about pride. And the book of Zephaniah, as we reach the end of it here, also has a lot to say about names. See, if you remember in Zephaniah chapter three, verses nine to 13, as the prophet shifted away from dealing with judgment against the proud as they are humiliated in God's judgment, in three, nine to 13, he talked about the exaltation of a humble people, and he did it by reversing the Tower of Babel. We're in Zephaniah three, nine. Whereas at Babel, language was confounded and mixed. In Zephaniah 3.9, the Lord changes a confounded speech to a pure speech. And the goal of that redemptive change that the Lord does is revealed in Zephaniah 3.9 that these changed people, these people of purified speech, do what? Seek their own name like Babel? No. They call upon the name of the Lord. See, in redemption, what the Lord does is he takes away that sinful, proud desire to exalt your own name, and instead instills a new nature for you to call upon the name of the Lord, to find refuge not in your own glory, but in the glory of the God of heaven. And it is only by calling upon his name, by finding refuge in his name, by submitting yourself before the God of heaven, that you may be exalted and granted a name. You see, brothers and sisters, herein lies the wisdom of God. The wisdom of God is that if you seek to proudly exalt yourself to gain your own name, he will humble you in his judgment. But contrarywise, the humble those who humble themselves before the Lord, those who call upon the name of the Lord for their salvation, they will be, in these verses, granted a name. You see, these verses tell us about the only true way to gain a name, the only true way to gain exaltation, the only true way to gain eternal blessing, and that only true way is to rest on the God who saves. while man in sin may seek to exalt themselves by gaining for themselves a name, building their own names up, becoming a household name. The true name, the true eternal blessing is given only to those who call upon the name of our Father in heaven. You see, in these verses, we see that the Lord is going to come and he is going to deal with the proud. He is going to humble the proud that seek their own name. but he's going to do this for the ultimate goal of restoring his humble people to his presence, exalting them, and making you, the people of Christ, a name and a praise among all the nations. See, these final verses of Zephaniah actually kind of summarize the entire book. And you could really summarize the book with the words of Jesus in Matthew 23, 12. That those who seek to exalt themselves will be humbled, but those who humble themselves will be exalted. We're gonna see this in three parts this evening. First, we're gonna see it with the Lord dealing with the proud oppressors in verse 18 and the first part of verse 19. second of the Lord saving his oppressed and humbled people and the rest of verse 19 and then finally the day of restoration when he exalts his humble people in verse 20 Now it's helpful to remember as we begin looking at verse 18 in the first part of verse 19 That all of Zephaniah 3 14 to 20 is a song Remember how it begins, sing aloud, shout, rejoice and exult with all your heart. It begins like so many of those Psalms with that call to praise, that call to singing, that call to glorifying the God of heaven. And so verses 14 and 15 form a sort of exuberant call to worship. Kind of put it this way, if Zephaniah 3, 9 to 13 sees the exaltation of those who call upon the name of God, then verses 14 and 15 identify those humble people exalted into God's presence as an exultant people who praise the name of the God of heaven. And these verses call the people of God to worship, to sing, to shout, to rejoice and exult in the name of their Redeemer. Notice it's not their name, is it? Whom do they rejoice in here? They rejoice in the Lord who has taken away his judgment against them. The Lord who by his Son takes away our sins as they are born by him upon the cross. After this call to worship in verses 14 and 15, the prophet shifts in verses 16 to 17 to reflect upon how the Lord himself is joyous in this act of salvation. That as you praise the name of your God in heaven, he himself exudes joy over his people. Remember we talked about how these verses are kind of the John 3, 16 of the Old Testament, that God in his own love is joyous, he's exuberant in his salvation. for his saints. And we saw how these verses came to an end, that he rejoices over his people with gladness. He is quiet in his love and exults over you, the church of Jesus Christ, with loud singing. Well, if verse 17 summarizes how the prophet is thinking about God's love and this exuberant joy over his people, Here in verse 18, what we're going to see is the way God's love is going to be expressed for his people. And I think there's a significant transition in these verses, whereas in verses 14 to 17, the prophet is the one who is singing. But as we reach the last verse of the song, notice the shift. It's not he will rejoice over you, he will be quiet in his love, he will exult over you. Now, it's I. For the final verse of the song, the Lord himself begins to sing. those of you who mourn for the festival, so that you will no longer suffer reproach. Behold, at that time, I will deal with all your oppressors. I will save the lame. I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth." God is the singer of the final verse of this great and joyous song. And the first line of this verse that God wants to sing in his love over you is that he is going to come and deal with all of your oppressors. See, we see the Lord's expression of love in dealing with those who are oppressive and violent against his church. And I believe we see it here in verse 18 into verse 19 in kind of two categories of oppressors. those who are internal to the covenant community, and then those who are kind of expansive, all who are oppressors. And it's in verse 18 that we see this sort of internal oppressor. Now when looking at verse 18, I think it's important to note that this verse is extremely difficult to come to terms with. In fact, most of your Bibles, I know mine has this little footnote in it where it says, the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain. In fact, in my own studies of Zephaniah, I found a man's work, he was writing a dissertation on Zephaniah and he outlined over 30 different interpretations of this verse. Literally every word. is debated by scholars. In fact, one scholar, a very prominent Old Testament scholar, says, quote, this verse is unintelligible. Now, while I know this verse is difficult, I believe it's far from unintelligible. Now, there's two main ways that Reformed confessional scholars have kind of taken these verses, this verse, one positive and one negative. The positive take of this verse is that what the prophet is speaking about here is a restoration from the exile. That when the Lord says, I will gather those of you who mourn for the festival so that you will no longer suffer reproach, the reproach that they are suffering is the reproach of the exile. that the gathering is the restoration of the people of Judah back into the land. And you can see why this might be part of the context and how just earlier in verse 15, the prophet said that the Lord has taken away the judgments against you. And so the restoration from the exile could be an image of God's love as he restores his people, those who were judged back into his presence, restoring them into the presence of God. However, while this is possible, I think another option is far more likely. I think this verse reveals a type of person that we've become very acquainted with in the book of Zephaniah. That is, it reveals a type of person in the covenant community, in the midst of the church, who hates the things of the Lord. who sees the things of the Lord as a burden and a reproach, who suffers because of the festivals. That is to say, it reveals a proud person. who thinks he knows better than the Lord, and who sees the worship of the Lord as something to be ignored, or at best just dealt with in order to pursue some other things. Listen to a very literal translation of this verse. It could be translated as, the ones who suffer because of a festival, I will gather from you. They were a burden, literally a tax upon her, a reproach. See, the you in this verse is the people of God. The her is Jerusalem. And so what we have in this verse is a people that is being gathered away from the people of God that are described as a burden and a reproach upon the people of God. And that realization is really important because what that does is it identifies the nature of the people who suffer because of a festival. These are those who show reproach for the festivals of God. See, these festivals, these appointed feasts in the Old Testament are like the Passover, the Feast of Booze, the Day of Atonement, or even the Sabbath. They were part of faithful worship for Old Testament saints. The Lord had revealed to his church the manner in which they were to praise and to glorify the God of heaven. And he called them to submit to that way of worshiping him. But notice how these people see the worship of God. They suffer because of it. They see the worship of the living God as suffering. See, this is no small thing to them. It's not forgetting your physical copy of scripture and you're opening up the ESV app on your phone and you inadmittedly, you know, click the email tab and you're distracted for a minute. It's not slipping over and you realize, oops, I clicked on Facebook and I've been distracted for a little bit of time. I need to reorient myself. This is not who we're dealing with here. We're dealing with those who hate the worship of God. These are those whom the prophet has addressed back in chapter one. that would, on the one hand, bow down and swear to the Lord, yet also bow down on the roofs to the hosts of heaven. Those who would swear to the Lord, yet also swear by the Canaanite deity Milcom, offering up child sacrifices. These are those who do not follow the Lord. who do not seek the Lord or inquire of the Lord. In Zephaniah chapter one, verse six. See, these are people in the midst of God's covenant community, in the midst of Judah, and even in the midst of his church, that see the faithful praise of God as oppressive. They see it as suffering. They are fundamentally idolaters. who use the church not to praise the God of heaven, not to serve his saints as faithful shepherds, but rather as a tool for their own glory. It could be like, if you remember from well over a year ago now, those evening wolves and roaring lions of Zephaniah chapter three, verse three, who go about prowling at night to devour the people of God for their own selfish gain. But make no mistake, these are members of the covenant community. He says they are removed from you, the you being the church. It's actually a very similar line to what he says back in Zephaniah 3, verse 11. I will remove from you your proudly exultant ones. And this means, and I think it's an important thing to realize this, that before the day of the Lord, before this day, they are among the people of God. These are wolves in sheep clothing that slip in seeking to do harm to the church of God. What does this verse say? They're a nuisance? They're a little bit annoying like a gnat flying around your head? No, it says they are a burden and a reproach. That should give us some pause when we think about it, shouldn't it? See, brothers and sisters, the OPC does not stand for Only Perfect Church. And so we are not immune to this sort of oppression. We are not immune to these sorts of oppressors seeking to come in and render harm to Christ's church. We're not immune to false teachers or arrogant boasters who care more about their own prestige than about the gospel of Christ. Paul warns us of such as these over and over again throughout the New Testament. Hell, there are those who have the appearance of godliness but deny its power, those who creep in to households to capture weak women burdened with sins, leading astray by various passions. And since we are not immune to them, I think there's two very important practical points that we should make in this verse. And the first one is to keep watch. Keep watch. Keep watch primarily on your own hearts. See, these who creep in are likely those who for a while look like they're genuine Christians. They say all the right things. They know all the right theological buzzwords. They can pass a presbytery exam. But the love of the world, the love of self leads them astray. In this age, as we fight our own indwelling sin, as we fight our own indwelling pride, we must be wary that in our lives as Christians, we seek our own name, rather than the name of our Savior. And this can be a greater danger, especially among those who might have a platform, and we call it a pulpit, or an office, like an elder or a deacon. We must keep watch on our hearts. See, if you're sitting there and you're tempted to start looking around and wondering what others might be like if they are a wolf in sheep's clothing, then perhaps the issue is not far from your own heart. We must keep God. Keep watch that this sin does not creep into our lives. And as it does, we repent. We turn to the Lord. We pray, Lord, may we live not for our own names, but for your name. We pray that God, by his spirit, would never allow us to use his worship as an occasion for pretense, for our own name, for our own exaltation. But instead, that by his spirit he will ignite a love for his worship in our hearts, that we would guard our hearts with godliness, seeking to praise his name. And as you do this, as you pray that prayer, seeking to exalt the name of your father in heaven, do it in a way as you seek to care for the flock of God. That's why pastors are called shepherds. In fact, pastor means shepherd, doesn't it? See, one of the ways that someone who seeks to glorify their own name can be weeded out in the flock of Christ is whether or not they are constantly seeking to make themselves known, to be the loudest voice in the room, to be the one that always has eyes turning to them. The one that never comes to serve, but is always around to be served. And so as you pray this prayer, that you would not be caught up with your own name, let the service of the saints, that is you serving the saints, be an antidote to your pride. You see, these proud worshipers seek to devour others. Serving is the fundamental opposite of that. So serve the body of Christ. Serve them in such a way that you illustrate that you are here to worship and to glorify the name of God in heaven and not your own name. Serve them with a type of self-sacrifice that says, I will not be glorified, but rather my God in heaven. And as you do this, as you seek to excise the sin of pride and seeking your own name from your hearts, as you realize that there are going to be wolves in sheep's clothing that seek to do harm to the church of Jesus Christ, I want you to realize something about this verse. And it's that this verse is not so much a warning as it is a promise. See, these wolves that seek to devour the people of God, Those who creep in and lead astray. These roaring lions that come to devour in the night. Those who are concerned for themselves rather than for the good of the brothers and sisters in Christ. The Lord's promise here is that they will be gathered away from you. On the day of the Lord's coming, there will be no more evening wolves or roaring lions among the flock of God. There will be none among the people of God who seek to do you harm. What did the prophet say? There will be none to make them afraid, verse 13. Or again in verse 15, you shall never again fear evil. Or again in verse 16, on that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, fear not, oh, See, the Lord here is making a promise and his promise is that he will come as the good shepherd and he will remove the wolves from the presence of the sheep. They will be humbled in his judgment. Those who look like predators today will become the prey as he comes on the day of judgment. The rod of our heavenly shepherd will be wielded high above their heads and will crush his wicked foe. But not only will the Lord come and remove these wolves who close themselves as sheep, he will also get rid of all who seek to oppress the people of God. And we continue to see this in the first part of verse 19. He says, behold, at that time, I will deal with all of your oppressors. Not just the wolves in sheep clothing, all of them. All who seek to do the people of God harm, all who seek to oppress the people of God, either internally in the midst of the church or externally, they will all be dealt with on the Lord's coming. See, all who seek to humiliate the people of God will be judged. They will be humiliated themselves. Interesting thing about this term oppression in these verses, it's actually the verb that means to humiliate. See, the oppressors are actually humiliators. They seek to lay low the people of God, to bring them down from their promised exaltation. But here, the Lord says he comes against all of those who would taunt and revile the people of God. He comes against the people of Moab and Ammon, who did those very things in Zephaniah 2, verses 8 and 9, who taunt and reviled and boasted against the territory of the people of the Lord of hosts. And so now his judgment is coming against them, as the prophet said in Zephaniah 2.10, in return for their pride, because they taunted and boasted against the people of the Lord of hosts. See, the Lord, he comes against all of those who are self-exalting. He comes against all of those who would seek their own praise and seek their own name. And he says here that as he deals with them, the humiliators will be humbled. They will be taken away, never again to do you harm. See, yes, the Lord is coming to deal with oppressors. He is coming to humble the proud. But as he is coming to humble the proud and deal with your oppressors, he is also coming to save his humble and oppressed people. So what we see in the next part of verse 19 is the Lord comes and saves the humble seeing God's love for his people. He not only comes to deal with oppressors, but to save his oppressed children. Listen to how he continues. He says, I will save the lame and gather the outcast and change their shame into praise and a name in all the earth. So the ESV translation there as renowned is actually name in Hebrew. See, it's in this verse that there's a great transition. As the Lord comes in salvation for his people, they are transformed from lame and outcasts and shamed, and to those who are praised and gain a name. See, there's a specific pattern that begins to emerge here in the book of Zephaniah that I think is absolutely vital for the Christian life. And that pattern is suffering unto glory. or to put it in terms of Zephaniah, humiliation to exaltation, humiliation to salvation, from outcast to gathered in, from lame to whole, from shame to praise. See, we see this explicitly in this verse as he is speaking to a humiliated and oppressed people, and he's making a forward-looking future promise to them. The Lord says that he will save and he will change the lame and the outcasts into praise and renown. See, that he says he will do it means that it hasn't happened yet. That the people still live in an age of humiliation. They still live in a time when they are brought low rather than lifted up high. See, the current reality for the people of God is that they are often maimed. often cast away and often shamed by their oppressors. But brothers and sisters, do not for a second lose sight of the Lord's promise. His promise is that he will come to save his humiliated and oppressed people. You who are lame, you who are outcast and who are shamed by oppressors today for your identity in Christ, his promise is that he will come and he will save you. See, this pattern of life for the believer is suffering unto glory. And this pattern of life for the believer is such because it is the pattern of life for your Savior. See, our Savior Jesus Christ came to save the outcast, to heal the lame and the sick, to restore the shame, to praise in a name. And he did so by himself being maimed. made lame, by himself being cast out, being an outcast, and by himself bearing the shame of the cross as he was struck unto death in utter humiliation. See, the pattern of suffering unto glory is the pattern of Christ's life as he transitioned from the cross to his crown at the right hand of the heavenly Father in heaven. See, he was maimed and beaten unto death on the cross, bearing the shame of sin. But on the third day, as he was raised in glory and ascended later into heaven, he received a name above all names, where he received a praise and exalted name for his great work of salvation. And it is to that Savior that we sing when we read these verses of Zephaniah. And it is because of our union with him that we gain these things as well. We receive a name because we call upon the name of Christ. We receive a praise because we praise our Father in heaven. We praise our Redeemer who has borne these things for us. And our shame is changed into these things because our Savior bore the shame of sin on our behalf. See, the pattern of Christ's life is from cross to crown. And so also the pattern of your life is from suffering to glory, from cross to crown. So brothers and sisters, don't think it's strange when you are oppressed, forsaken, and cast out by the world. Don't think it's strange when the culture turns against the fundamentals of our faith. Don't think it strange. When those belittle you on social media, when people belittle you on the news sites, when your views are seen as backwards or wayward, where because you hold certain things that are revealed in the Bible that you are cast out of the meetings, pushed away from the center of your social circle. Don't think it strange. This is the age of humiliation. This is the time when the people of God are maimed and outcast and shamed by others. That doesn't make it pleasant or easy, does it? To be lame or outcast in Zephaniah's time would have been a death sentence. And sometimes, even today, it feels the same. Knowing that we live in the age of humiliation does not lessen the sting of a teenager ridiculed by their friends for seeking to live a righteous life over their own popularity. It does not lessen the spiritual depression that might come when we see a brother or sister fall away from the faith. It doesn't lessen the sting of someone that ridicules us to our face because of our faith. But it does give us hope. It does give us hope because God's promise here is that the lame will be made whole, the outcasts are gathered, and that that shame that we do feel today will be changed to praise and renown among all the earth. See, the pattern of Christ's life is the pattern of life for all of those who trust in him. Where your savior goes, there you must follow. And so as Christ was raised into glory, as he was exalted, so also his people on the day of resurrection will be exalted as well. And as we do, we could describe every blessing that we receive in the heavenly places as a praise and a name. See, earlier we read from a passage in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy chapter 26, where in that passage, what Moses does is he takes a summary expression of all the blessings that God gives, and he summarizes as being granted and set for a praise, a name, and renown among all the peoples of the earth. And do you remember what salvation event in history that Moses grounded that proclamation in? It was the Exodus. And what was the pattern of the Exodus? But oppression by the hand of Egypt into salvation as the Lord draws his people out of the land of Egypt and into a land flowing with milk and honey. You see, the plan of salvation, brothers and sisters, is from humiliation to exaltation. The wisdom of God that makes foolish the things of the world is not that you can exalt yourself by pursuing your own glory, but rather in humility is the promise of exaltation. that from cross you will gain a crown. So brothers and sisters, in this age of humiliation, look to Christ who has gone before us as a first fruits and forerunner on our behalf. Trust in him, rest in him, because he is the one that promises to give you a name, to make you a praise, and to remove your shame. Look to your savior. knowing that his life moving from cross to crown is the pattern of your life. Look to the one who places his name upon you, who claims you as his own, and who will let none who bear his name fall away. You see, brothers and sisters, for those who bear the name of Christ, his exaltation or his exalting of you gives glory to his name in heaven. The whole work of salvation is to the exaltation of the God who saves, the exaltation of the God whom we praise. And as you look to him, as you look to your Savior in this day of humiliation and oppression and suffering, know that the Lord is not done working with you and he is not done working in history. The Lord has a work of salvation that will soon come to completion. It will come to completion on the day where he gathers his people up to himself and brings you into the heavenly kingdom of the new heavens and new earth. That's what we see last of all, very briefly this evening, that the Lord comes to restore his humble people in verse 20. Notice how the book of Zephaniah ends. At that time, I will bring you in. At the time when I gather you together, for I will make you a name and praise among all the peoples of the earth, When I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord." You'll notice that this verse is a near verbatim repeat of verse 19. And I think the prophet, well, the Lord actually speaking here is very purposeful in that. Children, have you ever had your parents say something twice? You know what that means? It's getting real. It's a very serious sort of situation. And the Lord here is doing the same thing. He's making an emphatic point. He's hammering his fist down on the pulpit and saying, I will do this. I will save my people. I will bring you out of the state of humiliation, and I will exalt you to the new heavens and the new earth. See, he's emphatic here. Notice how many times he says that. I will bring you in. I will gather you together. I will make you a name and a praise. I will restore you, the Lord says. But he also tells us when this will happen, doesn't he? It doesn't happen on our time. It doesn't happen whenever we want it. It happens when I restore your fortunes before your eyes. See, brothers and sisters, today we live by faith. We live trusting and resting in the promises of God, knowing that this word is true as the God who says it. But there will be a day when our life by faith transitions to a life in sight. For what we have by faith today is granted to us with our eyes to see in the new heavens and the new earth. A day when the Lord restores our fortunes before our very eyes. For what we know to be true today comes to fruition. And what we have by faith is given by sight. See, the day is fast approaching, brothers and sisters, where the promises of God will be brought to fulfillment. So his call for us today is to wait, to wait for the day of the Lord, to look to the day of the Lord for his promises that he will bring you in. He will bring you into his kingdom. He will sit you high on Zion. He will bring you to the heavenly new Jerusalem, that place where he will wipe away every tear of oppression from our eyes. Death will be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain. For all of these former things, the time of being lame and outcast and ashamed will pass away. All that will remain is being exalted to God in heaven. being raised up to dwell with our Savior in the heavenly places, where we will exalt and sing and praise His name forevermore, being a people of perfected praise. Brothers and sisters, that is the Lord's love for you, that He will deal with your oppressors, but especially He will bring you into His eternal city forevermore. And it is in that city that he will give you every blessing that he has promised, because he will bring you to himself. And so when oppression comes, and it will, look to that city. Trust and rest in the promises of your God. Look to your Savior, for your Savior already is now there you must follow. The pattern of Christ's life is the pattern of your life. So take the charge of Christ. Take up your cross and follow him. For that cross leads to a crown in glory. Glory where we exalt and praise not our own name, but the name of God in heaven. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for this great promise of exaltation. We know all too well that we in this age live as those who have been brought low and oppressed and are lame and outcast. But we who call upon the name of Christ know the great promises that you have given us. That in him, we will be exalted into your heavenly kingdom. that as we are brought into your presence, all of these things will be done away. There will be nothing to make us afraid, for we will be in the kingdom of you, our most high God. And so, Lord, so long as it is called today, we ask by the power of your spirit, you will not allow us to be a people that would seek our own name, that would seek our own praise, or rather those who would praise and exalt your name, for it is only in humiliation that there is a promise of exaltation, a promise that we lay hold of, not by our own merit, not by our own deeds, but rather by the work of Christ. Lord, we come confessing him today. We come looking to him today, knowing that in him every spiritual blessing is found, and it's in his name that we pray, amen.