But it's a real pleasure to be with you all. I caught the plane today in Philadelphia. I think it took me almost as long to get through passport control as it did to actually fly up from Philadelphia. But it is a great pleasure to be with you. And thanks to Rich for setting this up and for Emma for putting up with my continual delinquency on email and organizing it. And also to John and May for picking me up at the airport. What I want to do over the next couple of days is Look at some of the great stories of the Old Testament. I think as Christians we are very familiar often with the Old Testament. Some of the, dare I say it, some of the more fascinating stories in many ways are in the Old Testament, but often we don't quite know what to do with the Old Testament as Christians. I certainly know when my own two boys were small, we would have family devotions and every now and then I would ask them, I would give them a chance to choose the passage they themselves would like me to like to read and typically they went for two. They were both in the Old Testament for different reasons. If they wanted a short devotion, they would go for Psalm 23 because they knew that that was short. If they wanted an interesting story, they would go for the Book of Judges. It seems to me that the history books of the Old Testament contain some fascinating and memorable stories that are often sadly neglected in Christian circles. So what I want to do over the next couple of days is just explore a few of these stories, specifically stories relating to the great prophets Elijah and Elisha. Now I wonder if you would turn in your Bibles to the first book of Kings. I was going to just read chapter 17, but I'm going to take up the reading from chapter 16, verse 29. We're going to return to this first section, this end of chapter 16. We're going to return to this in the evening service on Sunday. And I think this section, the end of chapter 16, sets up the four sermons that I'm going to preach this weekend very nicely. We're coming to a particularly special, a particularly depraved moment in the history of The Israelite Kings and that is really the context for the ministries of Elijah and his some ways greater successor Elisha Hear the word of the Lord In the 38th year of Azar king of Judah Ahab the son of Omri began to reign over Israel and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria 22 years And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him. And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel the daughter of Ephbaal, king of the Sidonians. And he went and served Baal and worshipped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. And Ahab made an Asherah, Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. In his days, Heol of Bethel built Jericho. He laid its foundation at the cost of Abiram, his firstborn, and he set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son, Sagub, according to the word of the Lord which he spoke by Joshua, the son of Nun. Now Elijah the Tishbite of Tishbe in Galilee said to Ahab, As the Lord the God of Israel lives before whom I stand, there shall be neither dune nor rain these years, except by my word. And the word of the Lord came to him, Depart from here and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Cherith which is east of the Jordan. You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. He went and lived by the brook Cherith that is east of the Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. After a while the brook dried up because there was no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him, Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you. So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, Behold, a widow was there gathering sticks, and he called to her and said, Bring me a little water in a vessel that I may drink. And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand. And she said, As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug, and now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son. We may eat it and die. And Elijah said to her, Do not fear. Go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me. And afterward make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, The jar of flour shall not be spent and the jug of oil shall not be empty until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth. And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days. The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah. After this, the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill, and his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. And she said to Elijah, What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son. And he said to her, Give me your son. And he took him from her arms and carried him up into the upper chamber where he lodged, and laid him on his own bed. And he cried to the Lord, O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourned by killing her son? And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried to the Lord, O Lord my God, let this child's life come into him again. And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and delivered him to his mother. And Elijah said, see, your son lives. And the woman said to Elijah, now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth. Let us pray. Oh, Lord God and loving Heavenly Father, you are a God who dwells in unapproachable light. You are infinite. Our minds Even at their highest cannot grasp you, Lord, for your foolishness is much higher than our greatest wisdom. And even more so, Lord, not only are our minds finite, they are darkened by sin. And so, God, as we come now to reflect upon your revelation, upon your great deeds through history, upon your inscripturated word, we would pray that your Holy Spirit would open our hearts and minds, that we might behold Christ in these pages. that we might leave this place knowing that we have met with the Living God, longing to serve you better, and desiring always to be in your presence. For we pray these things, in Jesus' name. Amen. I mentioned in the preamble that this story, this arrival of Elijah, takes place at a watershed moment within the history of Israel. You know your Old Testament history, you'll know that after the death of Solomon, the kingdom was divided. Two tribes went one way, Judah and Benjamin, and they became known as the Kingdom of Judah. And Judah occupied a certain geographical territory within the Promised Land. It occupied territory where the city of Jerusalem and the Temple of God could be found. The other 10 tribes followed a man called Jeroboam, the son of Neba. Jeroboam the son of Nebat, though he controlled ten tribes, had a distinct political geographical problem. The problem was this, it was really very simple, that the people of the ten tribes that he ruled needed to go back to Jerusalem to worship God in the temple. And Jeroboam was a very astute politician and he knew that over time this divided geographical loyalty could well separate him from the people as their loyalty started to drift back towards the kingdom of Judah. And so in order to preempt that kind of problem, what Jeroboam did was he set up golden calves in the cities of Bethel and Dan. Bethel will come back into our narrative in the fourth sermon on Sunday evening. But Jeroboam sets up golden calves in Bethel and Dan and he says to the people of Israel, you can worship the Lord here. You don't need to go back to Jerusalem. You can worship God close to home. And what Jeroboam does is establish a precedent for future kings of this kingdom of Israel. And as you work through the book of Kings, a little refrain emerges that so-and-so was king and he ruled for a certain period of time, but he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Neba. And what the writer is telling you there is this king did not have the highest political integrity to tear down the idols of Bethel and Dan, instruct the people to go back and worship Jerusalem. So Jeroboam becomes sort of the benchmark of Israelite depravity. He's the man, if you like, who introduced false worship of the true God to the people of Israel. Let me come to Ahab. Ahab is described in a different way and an even more sinister way. It's verse 31 of chapter 16, and as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, took for his wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ephbaal, king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal. The writer's making a point. The point is this. The height of sinful ambition for previous kings The sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, that was the starting point. That was but a light to the plans that Ahab had for the nation. Ahab's plan was not simply to allow the false worship of the true God to continue. Ahab's plan was to strike a political alliance with the Sidonians, the price of which was the introduction of the worship of Baal into the territory of God. consecrated, dedicated. So Ahab is a king of peculiar wickedness in the history of Israel at this point. And it's at this moment in time that Elijah bursts onto the scene. It's almost as if the Lord God has said, if we were looking at it from sort of human perspective, the Lord God has said, enough is enough. Now it is time to take this mess down. And so, the beginning of chapter 17, Elijah bursts onto the scene. And the story is a relatively straightforward one. The man from Tishbe, Elijah, confronts Ahab and declares, there will be no rain. For a while, he goes and lives by this brook Cherith, and is fed by ravens. But presumably, as the drought starts to bite and the water table drops, the creek, the river, the stream, the brook dries up. I live by a creek just outside Philadelphia. It's dry at the moment. Two or three months down the line, it'll be flooding. But it's dry at the moment because we're at the moment where the water table is at its lowest. The brook has dried up. The brook, Cherith, dries up. And the Lord then sends Elijah to Zarephath. Zarephath is near Sidon. It's in the territory of Phoenicia. It's important to understand that. We're going to come back to that in a few minutes. Elijah's been sent outside of the promised land. He's been sent outside of the promised land. in order to find his sort of immediate human salvation, if you like. And there he comes across a widow. Chance encounter, humanly speaking, but as we shall see, clearly very, very providential, and not simply because she's able to provide Elijah with food. In actual fact, she isn't really able to provide Elijah with food. The fact that she's a widow, has a son, is very, very significant. She's down to her last morsels of food. Elijah works a miracle. The flower and the oil she has last till the Lord sends rain. But then even as the Lord has blessed this woman in this way, the child becomes ill and dies. Then Elijah, in what can only be described as a weird and bizarre ritual, at least at first reading, raises the child from the dead. Great story. Lots of human drama in this story. You could make a pretty decent movie out of just this sort of scenario in and of itself. Question of course for us as Christians is, what use is it in Canada in the 21st century? What are we learning from this story that will be remotely useful to us when we return to our places of employment next week? We're told in the New Testament that all scripture is God-breathed and useful. Passages like this certainly seem useful for entertainment purposes. But what is the lesson for us as Christians that we need to be informed? Well, I want to suggest, and this is not an exhaustive account of this passage at all, as if one could ever do that. I want to suggest there are four basic lessons to draw from this passage. First of all, I think this passage teaches us about the power of God in His Word. Secondly, I think it points to the power of God in His exclusive holiness. Thirdly, it points to the power of God in His mercy. Fourthly, I think it points to the power of God in the midst of death. I think this passage teaches us a lot about the perennial power of the Lord God, in His word, in His holiness, in His mercy, perhaps most relevant of all, in the midst of death. So let's take those points one at a time. First of all, what does this passage teach us about the power of God in his word? Well, I want to suggest to you that the most interesting thing we first learn about Elijah in this passage is the thing we don't learn about Elijah. I teach history for a living and one of the things I always try to say to students is sometimes it's what's not in the text that is the most significant thing. Some things are left out and the very fact they're left out tells you far more than if they'd been included. There's something very significant we don't learn about Elijah. We learn it's about Jeroboam. We learn it's about Elisha. Don't learn it's about Elijah. I don't know how many of you, how many people here read those interminably long and frequently boring Russian novels? Anybody here read Russian novels? In translation, I'm not looking for super heavyweights. Nobody reads Russian novels. Nobody here read a Russian, just one or two. A little boy, oh, fantastic. Might constitute child abuse, making a little boy read a Russian novel, I fear. But one of the things that makes Russian novels three times the length of any other novel you like is the fact that it takes you a long time to work out who's And it takes you a long time to work out who's who, because in Russian novels, the characters have numerous names. And one of the names, the patronymic. A short Russian novel by Solzhenitsyn, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Denisovich is the patronymic. It tells you who Ivan's father was. It's not the equivalent of an American or British surname. Perhaps it's more the equivalent in the old days of McDonald or McLeod. It locates a person genealogically. And the reason it does that is that, really, for most of human history, prior to the very, very recent past, who your father was, was critically important to your status in society. We still have little touches of that. I mean, if your surname is Bush or Clinton, You have a certain cachet. You arouse certain feelings because of genealogical connection. The Bible, of course, is full of it. Who is Jeroboam? He's the son of Nebat. My wife comes from the island of Lewis. When I visit the island of Lewis and I bump into somebody I don't know on the street, maybe we start a conversation, very quickly they'll ask me, who are your people? Because Lewis is a very rural society Who you're related to allows people to locate you within a social, cultural framework. In the Bible, we're always told who people's fathers are, because that is what makes them something. Elijah. You don't know who Elijah is. That's significant. That's significant. Because whatever authority Elijah has, in this narrative has nothing to do with who his people are. Nothing to do with who his father is. What does Elijah say? Elijah the Tishbite of Tishbi and Gilead said to Ahab, as the Lord, the God of Israel lives. That's where Elijah's authority is. Elijah's authority is not dependent upon where he fits in the social hierarchy. Otherwise we'd have been told. Elijah's authority comes Elijah's authority is not the authority of his person. It is the authority of his message. His message has authority because of the one from whom he brings the message. Elijah's ministry will have power not because he's the son of a bigwig. He may well have been. Why is that relevant to us today? I think it is a reminder to us that the church is powerful. Because of the message of the church. Recent name, some of you may have heard of him. Minister recently fell in a terrible adultery scandal in the United States, beginning of the summer. And within days, there was an online petition saying, This man's message is too important for him not to be in the pulpit. I'm inclined to respond and say, if that man's message depends upon him being in the pulpit, then it's not the gospel. Because the gospel depends upon no particulum. Gospel is powerful because it's the gospel. First thing we learn from this passage, Word of God. That's important to remember in the church. When a beloved minister retires, it's not a cause for despair. It could be a cause for sorrow. Because a man you've loved, been helped by, is retiring and you won't hear him regularly again. It's not a cause for despair. Because if that man's ministry has any power at all, it comes from the fact that he preaches the Word of God. He has no monopoly. There are others who preach the Word of God. Does it discourage you sometimes, hey, you're in the RPCNA, I'm in the OPC, we talk the same language. Does it discourage you that your church is so small? There are mega churches in America bigger than my entire denomination. Does that discourage you? Does it make you feel weak? Well, to some extent. But of course, it only makes me feel weak because we tend to think inhuman. One man and God is always in the middle. Church that preaches the Word is a powerful Church, whatever its outward circumstances. So the first thing from this passage then is the power of God in His Word. The whole ministry of Elijah is predicated on power that comes from God, not power that resides somehow in Elijah as a cool guy who occupies a particularly high status in Israelite society. He brings the Word of God and that is what makes him powerful. Secondly, the power of God in his holiness. What else does this passage teach us? It teaches us this, that God will give his glory to no other, and he will not tolerate that his people look to other gods for what he alone can provide. Baal was a god of rain and fertility. There is a, I think, a humorous irony to the challenge the Lord is issuing to Baal in this passage. Baal doesn't exist, so he's really issuing it to the people of Israel. You have chosen to trust this God of rain and fertility. Well, I'm going to close the heaven. We'll see who really controls. Stopping the rain is a direct challenge. Baal's sovereignty over the element. There is what we might call a meteorological Think your God rules the weather. Well, I'm gonna change the weather I'm gonna bring you to your knee That's what it takes make you acknowledge But more than that, of course The Lord sends Elijah once the brook has dried up sends him to Zarephath near Sidon We know that Zarephath was a center of Baal worship What is the Lord doing here? Deliberately sending His man into the heart of enemy territory in order to prove their... You can imagine it, can't you? Well, yeah, okay, the Lord closed the heavens in Israel because, well, that's His own land. If you get outside of the border of Israel and you're entering into areas where Baal is really the one in control, it is no coincidence the Lord sends Elijah Zarephath. Zarephath is in the heart of Baal's own territory. The Lord there provides. In the midst of this dark, Baal-dominated territory, the Lord preserves His prophets. God is a jealous and holy God. We have a constant tendency, do we not, to look elsewhere for our own security and well-being. What this passage tells us is, there is nowhere safe. God controls it. It also teaches us that God is quite prepared, disciplined. That is what drives that message home. So the second lesson then, this passage is the power of God in His holiness. He will not allow His people to give Glory to another. The third point, the power of God in his mercy. This is a story of judgment. Ferocious judgment comes against the nation here. And it's clearly spilling out into the neighboring nations as well, because this widow in Zarephath, she too is feeling the pinch of the drought and presumably subsequent famine that is biting in the ancient Near East at this point. This is a story of severe judgment. But even as we have that kind of macro story of God's judgment, the universal judgment against these nations, yet that provides the context for this micro story, this micro narrative. God's care for specific individuals. God's judgment does not require that he deny his mercy I think, first of all, we have Elijah and the brook and the raven. I don't know if you've seen the Lord of the Rings movies and the Hobbit movies. It's slightly irritating, isn't it, how the eagles always sweep in to solve a difficult sort of problem. Gandalf's stuck on top of a cliff somewhere, and lo and behold, an eagle just flies in and takes him away. They're caught in that molten lava at the end, and the eagles sweep in and take him away. They're great movies, don't get me wrong, great story. slightly contrived, always have the eagle swoop in. That's kind of what happens here. The Lord controls the creature, brings them in so that he might preserve the life of the prophet. These ravens bring him food. They bring him food at God's command, preserve him. Even in the midst of this judgment, the Lord loves his servant, not allow him to But the story gets better, doesn't it? He then goes to Zarephath. And what's fascinating, of course, is the choice of the objects of mercy. These aren't just any old people. This is a widow and an orphan. I don't know if you have systematic theology at home on your shelf. You're real sort of hardcore. You may have Louis Burkhoff. I would say to students, you know, Louis Burkhoff's is a great dictionary, but you've got to be a complete nutcase to read it from sort of cover to cover. It's really rather boring. It wasn't designed to be read that way. But if you go home and you flick up the section on God's attributes, I see a discussion there of qualities of God, what God's like. And often those attributes can be a bit abstract at first glance. Just. God is omnipotent. God is omniscient. God is loving. Varying degrees of sort of abstract. Fascinating when we look at the Bible, the Bible often talks about the attributes of God in a very concrete way. Deuteronomy 10, 17 says this, For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial, and who takes no bride. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow. And he loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Somebody say to you, what's God like? Pretty good answer would be this. God is one who loves the widow and the fatherless. Scripture says that. God is the one who cares for the widow and the fatherless. And interestingly enough, of course we know in the Old Testament there is this constant intimate connection being made between the character of God and the character of God's people. God's people are to live in a certain way because that reflects God's character to the world around. Deuteronomy 27 19 says this, cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to the sojourner the fatherless and the widow. Point being made there, the one who perverts justice to the sojourner, the fatherless and the widow, is not reflecting the character of God, is not being that which God wants them to be. Here, this is a time in Israel's history where Israel, the people of God, have pretty much abandoned reflecting the image of God. We might say, this just doesn't seem to be any witness on the face of the earth to the character of God. And then Elijah strolls into town. He meets the widow and the father. Immediately extending God's mercy. The whole nation has failed. But one man reflects the character of God. Even as judgment has come on the face of the earth, God remains true to his character. He extends mercy to this individual. There are so many lessons one could draw just from that single principle. I want to suggest just two of them. Even as societies come under God's judgment, even perhaps as the church comes under God's judgment. We must not forget that God is who he is, continues to care. And we must not forget that Christians and the church are who they are, and must continue to reflect the character of the world around them. That's what Elijah does at this point, and it's what God does through Elijah. When this woman meets Elijah, it's the greatest day of her life. Not only is her family saved from destruction, God himself shone forth action. God's love is particular and powerful, even in times of great judgment. Matthew 16, 18, and I tell you, you are Peter on this rock. I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against me. God's powerful mercy. And that brings me to my fourth point. The power of God in the midst of death. It's a weird ritual. If I get home on Monday and perish the thought, get a phone call from a congregant saying, my child has died, I will not be thinking, well, what would Elijah do in these circumstances? Maybe I should go and do that. It's a weird ritual. It's almost but not quite a one-off. What is the significance? Well, dead bodies. Dead bodies are filthy, aren't they? Not necessarily filthy physically, but in the Old Testament they are ritually dirty. Death is an intrusion into the created realm which should not Death is dirt on the face of God's creation. Numbers 19.11 says this, whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days. In other words, what Elijah does in this passage is the exact opposite of what he should have done and what we would have expected him to do. What does Elijah go and do? He goes and throws himself. onto the body of this child. God's prophet, God's man of the hour, goes and makes himself deliberately unclean. He should not have done that. And the pungent power of death is such that even if that body had been removed from the bed and Elijah didn't know it and had sat down on that bed, it would have made him unclean. It's that powerful. But that isn't what Elijah does not become a dead body. Dead body is made clean. Life returns to the dead child at this point. It's a weird ritual, but I think there's something very theologically specific happening. Elijah has to touch this child so that the cleanness that comes from him can go into the child. It finds its counterpart, doesn't it, in the New Testament. Turn with me. My favorite chapters in the New Testament. My wife always says, I hate it when you reference this chapter. The chapter with the woman with the flow of blood, and my wife always says, I just feel so dirty when you read that. And I always say to her, that's precisely the point. That's what's being got out here. It's a story, isn't it? It's a story of a double uncleanness, Mark chapter 5, the latter part of the chapter, verse 21 and following. gyrus the synagogue uh... ruler is uh... his daughter is dying and he calls on jesus the teacher to come in and heal her and jesus is making his way and while he's making his way to heal gyrus' daughter gets caught in a crowd and the crowd are pushing around him and pressing in against him and at some point a woman has had a flow of blood for twelve years you know if you're over forty, if you're over forty-five, twelve years goes like that we are reminded in this passage that That was the age of the little girl. I think the point is being made, it's like a lifetime. This woman has been unclean for a lifetime. She would have felt every second of those 12 years. At some point, this woman with a flow of blood reaches out and touches Jesus. And we have that weird comment, don't we, in verse 30. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, who touched my garment? You've seen those old footage of the Beatles arriving in America, pushed through crowds, I guess one direction. And you can imagine if you're Paul McCartney and you're being pushed through this crowd, or Harry Styles being pushed through the crowd, and everybody's reaching out and touching you. Would it have been like that for Jesus? Everybody would have been touching him. What's special about this woman? She's unclean. There's one person in that crowd that day that Jesus cannot be touched by with impunity. That's the unclean woman who is excluded from the people of God by her uncleanness. When Jesus feels the power flowing out from him, we don't know what Jesus would have felt at that point, but what's going on is this, he should have been made dirty, but in fact she is made clean. That's what's going on. It's like Elijah. Even better, of course, Jesus, the Temporary tragedy of this story is that the delay, the delay involved in trying to find out who this woman was and confronting her, leads to the death of the little girl. And when Jesus goes in to the upper room, what does he do? Well, like Elijah, he does what he shouldn't do. Taking her by the hand, he said to her, "'Talitha cuma,' means little girl, I say to you, cry. She's made clean. He's not made clean. Like Elijah all over again. It's exactly the same as Elijah. Except it isn't. One very significant difference between what Jesus does and what Elijah does. Turn with me back to 1 Kings 17. Listen to this. Listen to the difference between Elijah and Jesus. Verse 21, Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the Lord, O Lord my God, let this child's life come into him again. Now listen to what Jesus said. Taking her by the hand, he said to her, Little girl, I say to you, Arise. The difference is this. Elijah has to fall upon God to work them. Jesus just commands the girls. It's not the same as Elijah. There are similarities, but there is an intensification, an escalation of what's going on here. I said to you earlier, Elijah only has power because he brings the Word of the Lord. Christ has power because he is God incarnate. Good news on two different levels. One, we're told today, and I'm going to come back to this in the fourth sermon, but we're told today people don't understand sin anymore. We talk about sin and it sounds kind of quaint. When I grew up, living in sin meant living with somebody without being married to them. It sounds kind of quaint now, living in sin. People still understand dirt. I say to you, you've got a dirty mouth. That guy's a dirty politician. That was a dirty trick you played. Pretty much everybody understands that. The Bible talks about sinners. I said to you this evening, it doesn't matter what you've done, it doesn't matter how dirty you feel, the Lord is powerful enough to cleanse you. Reaching out and touching Christ by faith cleanses you. Secondly, What is the thing that everybody has to fear? Death. Death can be very abstract. Till somebody you love dies. Then it's very real. There's nothing, I think there's nothing in some ways more terrifyingly awesome than standing by an open casket. Somebody you were talking to just a few days ago. Death is the most powerful thing I have ever witnessed. because there is nothing you can do to bring that person back. I don't care how young you are, death might seem a long way away, but it will come. There will be a day, unless the Lord returns, there will be a day when you wake up, brush your teeth, and the only question of relevance at that point is, why you drive? How many kids you have? Where you went to school? How much money you've got in your bank? The only question is, is there something more powerful to save me from this situation? What is more powerful than death? The Lord of life. What is more powerful than death? The Lord Jesus Christ. He doesn't even have to call upon God to raise this child. Christ has this kind of power. death itself. And of course, he goes on, he doesn't just touch dead bodies and demonstrate his power over the uncleanness of death. He himself becomes dead. Death cannot harm him. Christ himself plunges into the uncleanness of death, destroying his power. Brothers and sisters, fourth, glory of the gospel even in this passage. Lord God, we do thank you for the long line of prophets in the Old Testament who faithfully brought your word, but we thank you above all for the supreme end of the prophets in the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who did not just bring the word, the one who was himself the word and that in time. Lord, we pray this evening that you would forgive us, cleanse us of all of our dirt and filth, give us confidence, Lord, that clutching to Christ by faith, we might one day face the ultimate uncleanness, death itself, confident that we will pass to it, to the other side, where we will dwell in blissful communion.