Hello, you are listening to Second City Sermons,
a ministry of Second City Church in Midtown Harrisburg.
This fall we're studying the book of Second Corinthians.
Second Corinthians is a heartfelt and practical
book calling us back to the life of the cross.
We, like the Corinthians, so often pursue glory,
admire eloquence, shun suffering, hide hurt,
and hoard our goods. And yet the gospel of Jesus
tells us that resurrection comes after a cross.
comfort comes after being crushed, that the way
up is the way down, that the way to glory is
through suffering, that his strength is made
perfect in our weakness. We'd love to meet you
and we hope you'll consider coming and joining
with us each Sunday morning at 10 a .m. in the
heart of Midtown Harrisburg. You can find us
online at SecondCityChurch .org and on Facebook,
Instagram, and YouTube. We hope you enjoy this
sermon. God bless. Great God, thank you for your
holy word. Thank you for these texts, particularly
from 2 Corinthians chapter 3, but the beauty
that is your word, Psalm 32 and Ezekiel 11 and
Mark chapter 7 and all of these in many regards,
speaking of these same truths. Lord, thank you
for the gift of its reading. Thank you for the
gift of its preaching. God, I pray for each one
of us. that we would be attentive this morning
to what you would have to speak to us. Lord,
speak, your servants are listening. In Jesus'
name, amen. All right, so this morning in our
adult Sunday school class, well, what we're doing
is we're inviting different people in the church,
and I would encourage you, if you care to do
this, it would be a gift to all of us, to share
some of the heroes of the faith that have gone
before us in church history with one another.
I got to do that this morning. And we were looking
at the life and legacy of a man who many consider
to be the greatest, or at the very least, it's
unquestionable that he is among the greatest
Scotsmen of the 19th century. Thomas Chalmers
served in many, many ways, many different educational
posts at St. Andrews a couple of times. in Edinburgh.
He was the president for the Royal Society of
Edinburgh, which is Scotland's national society
for science and letters. I mentioned that the
University of St. Andrews had a twice -in -large
lecture hall for the lectures he was giving on
mathematics. They were so invigorating. I wish
I would have had him as my math teacher. He was
also the professor of moral philosophy. He gave
lectures on political economy, on economics.
When he was the pastor of the Great Tron Church
in Glasgow, he started a midweek study for businessmen
in the area there in Glasgow to gather together
and to think of the things of God. And he thought,
of all places, let's start with Christianity
and astronomy. That makes a lot of sense, right?
His first lectures were on astronomy and actually
those lectures were published and remarkably
that year they were published eight more times.
They went through nine printings that year. They
outsold in that year the combined works of both
Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott lectures on
astronomy. There's zero question. He was one
of the great thinkers of the day with regards
to poverty, particularly in the cities. How do
we care for the poor? While he was the pastor
of the great Tron Church in Glasgow, he was there
for five years, and then there was the massive
influx of people for the coal and the textile
industry in the south of Scotland, as was the
case in other parts of the world, including our
own country. There was this huge industrial revolution
that was taking place and all these people were
flocking into cities and there was great poverty.
And he looked out upon one of the most poverty
stricken areas of Edinburgh, St. John's Parish,
and he petitioned, can I start a church there?
And while he was there planting that church and
caring for that, the city's expense that they
gave to the care of the poor was diminished to
one fifth of what it was before, because the
church was so active in caring for the poor.
I read that there were 50 different Sunday schools
going on, largely teaching people how to read,
how to brush their teeth, but also the great
faith of Christ's cross and resurrection. Thomas
Chalmers taught many of the great pastors and
hymn writers of the 19th century. You can think
of Horatius Bonar or Andrew Bonar, or you can
think of Robert Murray McShane. Some of you use
his Bible reading program to direct your Bible
reading throughout the year. He taught some of
the great professors that would come after him.
One of the great Old Testament scholars in Scotland
in the latter part of the 19th century was John
Duncan, who had the nickname Rabbi, even though
he was Scottish, because he so knew and loved
the things of the Jewish people. Rabbi Duncan.
And a lot of people attribute to Thomas Chalmers
really the beginning of the great missions movement
that began in the 19th century. David Livingston
coming out of that movement. But the Scottish
The Scots at that time and largely under the
leading of Thomas Chalmers were the great missionaries
of the 19th century going out into the world
and telling people about Jesus. I could keep
going because by all accounts this was a great
man who did great work for the gospel of Christ
in the world. And yet, here's where I want to
go with this. And yet, early on in his life,
early on in his career, there's zero question
that he had little concern for the people under
his care. He would say the same thing. The first
pastor that he had was in this small fiefshire
town of Kilmany, which is not too far from St.
Andrews, and he would spend all of Monday through
Friday there in St. Andrews giving lectures on
math and other things. Well... I will say this
until he he came at odds he was an assistant
he was a lecturer there at the university and
then the the main math professor and he had it
out because they were both hotheads and so he
started lecturing on math at just a town hall
and all the students actually went to his lectures
he was a rather full of himself and he thought
he didn't really need to care for his flock and
until there was a massive transformation in his
life one year um actually so one year his uncle
and his beloved sister both died And then he
self -published a book that got no attention
at all. The title of that book is, Inquiry into
the Extent and Stability of Natural Resources,
invigorating. It was an analysis on some of Napoleon
Bonaparte's commercial policies. The stuff that
puts you to bed probably, like our book of Church
Orders, which is so helpful. Anyway, he was so
discouraged by that and so distraught over the
passing of his loved ones. And then he got consumption
and actually spent about six months in bed. And
it was through this dynamic of being humbled
and then also coming face to face with the reality
that we may have to give an account at any moment
to Christ for what we did in this body. that
his life could be taken from him at any moment,
that the Holy Spirit so worked in him that he
came back from that deathbed and everybody knew
he was a changed man. And the Holy Spirit had
entirely changed him. He went from kind of never
seeing his parish, not having a care of the world
for them, spending all of his time over in Posh
St. Andrews to devoting himself to the ministry
there in Kilmany. And the... The doors were bursting
at the seams for people to come and to hear Thomas
Chalmers preach. He went on, of course, to have
this remarkable ministry and all these other
kinds of ways. But he wrote at that time in his
journal, he said, Oh God, make me feel the firmness
of the ground I tread upon and enable me to give
all my mind to thy word. Above all, may I never
receive by a single inch from my Savior. Now
the end of second Corinthians chapter 2 last
week we didn't talk about this last verse but
it ended like this For we are not like so many
Peddlers of God's Word but as men of sincerity
as commissioned by God in the sight of God we
speak Christ and we pick up in chapter 3 and
It begins with this distinction between the peddlers
of God's Word which happens a few times in 2
Corinthians chapter 3, and a Christ -centered,
sort of spirit -filled ministry. This is how
it begins. 2 Corinthians chapter 3. Actually,
let me find it. You can turn in your Bibles too.
There, we're going to look at, draw your attention
to different passages. 2 Corinthians chapter
3 begins like this. Are we beginning to commend
ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters
of recommendation to you or from you. See, in
the ancient world, if one was to go from one
town to the next, say, last week I mentioned
Troas up in the north of the Aegean Sea down
to Corinth in the southern sort of tip of what
would be Greece now. If you did that and you
wanted to get employed in this new place, you
would get letters of recommendation showing that
you were a fine brick layer or you could make
tents or all these kinds of stuff. You would
bring along these letters and you'd say, hey,
can I have a job? Of course, we still do this
today, right? We fill out our CVs. We get other
people to reference us. We make calls to make
sure those references are good. We write letters
of recommendation. I have written many of you
letters of recommendation for various. It's a
fine practice, those kinds of things. But they
had, this is what had happened. The people came
in to Corinth and they were sowing dissent among
the people. And they were saying, oh, this whole
free offer of the gospel thing that Paul's offering,
that's not enough. And they're doing this because
they had letters. And so because they had letters,
they got the job. And because they had letters,
they started getting the money, started being
the peddlers of the word of God. Paul says there
is a different kind of letter and it is not just
different sort of materially, but it's on a whole
different kind of level, letter difference. It's
the letter that is written on the heart by the
Holy Spirit. And so verses two and three, they
say this, you yourselves are our letter of recommendation
written on our hearts to be known and read by
all. and you show that you are a letter from
Christ delivered by us, written not with ink,
but with the Spirit of the living God, not on
tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.
And some of you might catch, some of you know
your Bibles well, and you might catch that he's
referring to one of the great passages in the
Old Testament, Jeremiah 31. It's also, by the
way, connected to Ezekiel chapter 11 that you
heard. But here are some of the verses from Jeremiah
31, verses 31 to 33. Behold, the days are coming,
declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
Not like the covenant I made with their fathers
on the day when I took them by the hand to bring
them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that
they broke, though I was their husband, declares
the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will
make with the house of Israel. And after those
days, declares the Lord, I will put my law within
them and I will write it on their hearts and
I will be their God and they will be my people.
Or as Paul continues on in verses five and seven,
five to seven, it says this, not that we are
sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is
coming from us, but our sufficiencies from God
who's made us. us sufficient to be ministers
of a new covenant, not by the letter, but by
the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit
gives life." Okay, now you all probably have
heard, if you've been around church settings
for a little while, maybe you've read about some
of this stuff, this great distinction between
the old covenant and the new covenant. And you've
probably heard that that's primarily sort of
a temporal kind of thing old covenant equates
to old Testament maybe New covenant equates to
new testament maybe y 'all heard that kind of
thing Probably some price maybe refer that kind
of thing Old covenant pre Christ new covenant
post Christ that kind of thing BC you know, all
that kind of division. But I want to put something
before you this morning that I actually think
is deeply, deeply important. It massively influences
how we approach the Bible, but it also invites
us to examine our hearts, I think, which is a
very healthy thing. And it's this, that the Old
Covenant, New Covenant idea is one that is not
so much temporal, but spiritual. It's not so
much a temporal distinction as a spiritual distinction.
And what Paul is saying in this chapter is that
you can be part of Israel or not part of true
Israel. You can be a preacher and you can be
a teacher and you can be an elder and you can
lead small groups and you can lead Sunday school
and not be truly a part of the people of God.
You can be a faithful attender in worship. You
can know your theology. You can read through
the Bible. You can do all these different things.
Volunteered English language classes. And you
can be of the old covenant and not the new. You
can be of the letter and not the spirit. The
way of death and not the way of freedom. One
last, the new covenant working in us through
the Holy Spirit. But the other comes to an end
the covenant the old covenant the covenant of
working of letter of law of doing So the next
two paragraphs of this chapter, they kind of
talk about these two big pictures The two big
words that they keep going back to are the words
glory and the word veil. And I think as we kind
of maybe consider these two words, I think it
will invite us into this understanding. But first
what you have to get when you come to these two
words, glory and veil in these next two chapters,
what you need to understand is that what Paul
is doing is throughout this whole section right
here, is he's inviting you back to the story
of Exodus 32 to 34. Now, some of you may know
what that story is, but you know. Many of you
probably don't remember that. Children, some
of you are going to remember what happens in
Exodus 32. When Moses goes up to the mountain
and he receives the commandments of God written
on the stone, what are the, I want like under
15 of these sanctions, what are the people of
God, the Israelites doing down at the base of
the mountain? What does he find them doing? Thank
you. Building an idol, right? They've gathered
together their jewelry. Hey, give me your earrings
and your rings and your necklaces. Let's throw
them in. Oh, there's a golden calf. Let's bow
down. So Moses comes down from the mountain,
right? He's got the tablets and he hears singing.
People are praising. He hears shouting. It's
a worship service. Of course, he throws down
those tablets, doesn't he? He's kind of... He's
kind of unhappy about that, as he should be because
they're not actually worshiping the Lord. They
had just been brought out of slavery. They'd
just seen the mighty acts of God in salvation.
And what do they do? They fall down and they
worship another God. He had just been given the
law of God, the letter of God written on tablets
of stone. But the letter in and of itself never
brings life. It never does. The letter does absolutely
nothing for you. It actually does something very
negative. It only brings condemnation. Your heart
is not bent towards the Lord. Your heart has
not received a transformation through the Spirit
of God. Of course, the story goes on to tell
of how Moses then begins to meet with God in
the tent of meeting, right? Outside of the camp.
because God's basically like fed up with them.
And, you know, Moses and Joshua are out there
at the tent of meeting and Moses goes in to meet
with God. And when he would meet with God, he
would come out and his face, it says, would be
full of glory, would be radiant because he'd
been in God's presence, unveiled before the face
of God. And he would come out. and he would shine
with God's glory. Now, if we looked down at that
paragraph that begins there in verse seven, what
we would see is that this ministry of Moses is
said to be a ministry of death. Sorry, it's said
to be primarily a ministry of glory. It's very
interesting that that's the word that keeps being
said. It's also said to be a ministry of death,
but it's primarily said to be a ministry of glory.
And what many Christians make of this is primarily
the idea of death. Ah, the Old Testament, death,
bad, old, passe, antiquated, to be disregarded
and not read and not studied and not thought
much of, right? Old, particularly we like new
stuff, right? Maybe not new, we're in this building
that could use a little new in it sometimes.
But that is not the main thing that Paul's saying.
The main thing he's saying actually is that it
was very glorious. Verse 7 actually tells us,
now at the Ministry of Death, carved in letters
of stone, came with such glory that the Israelites
could not gaze at Moses' face because of its
glory. He twice says, it's glorious. You can't
even look at it. It's so amazing. That's part
of... the emphasis, down in verse 11, the end
of that paragraph, for if what was being brought
to an end came with glory, much more, well what
does permanent have glory? You know what? I've
been hearing this alarm going off since I walked
by this morning at 5 30. It goes off like every
half hour. And so it's all just going to distract
us for the next minute. How about we just let
it pass by for a moment? I was thinking this
morning while I was sitting in my office, I was
like, what am I going to do with that alarm that
keeps going off? It's probably going to go off
right in the middle of my sermon. And it is.
We'll just let it pass. It doesn't last too long.
Golly somebody it's your car wake up 11 o 'clock
already. It's time to get on with your day It's
what I'm saying is that what what what Paul is
unequivocally saying is that this this old covenant
can come with this sorry this this This gift
of the law can be a ministry of death, but you
have to understand that it's glorious It's surpassed,
but the primary thing that Paul does say about
this was that it was a glorious time. Now, what
he is not saying is that the old covenant was
glorious. He's saying that the letter that was
given at the time was glorious, which is to say
the law of God. But if all you have is that,
it only brings death. and it only brings condemnation
and it has no glory at all. Even the glory that
it does have, received rightly, is surpassed
by what we have in light of the coming of Christ.
And yet, if you receive it as simply a letter,
as simply something to do, it brings death, it
brings condemnation. Well, brothers and sisters,
how did the Israelites receive the law of God?
Where are the 40 years of wandering in the desert
by the people of God? Was that generation commended
for their faithfulness? Lifted up as a model.
Did the generation that Jeremiah speaks to, he
says there's going to be a day when the spirit
writes, the words of God upon our hearts. Is
the generation of Jeremiah's day ever lifted
up to us as to be commended? No, not at all.
They had the very words of God, and yet what
we hear time and time again in the scriptures
is that they didn't care for the care for the
Lord Himself. Though they had the very law of
God given to them, their hearts were far from
Him. And the fact is that you can have the law
of God and it be glorious. But if you do not
have a love for the Lord, if the Spirit of God
that Moses had, that Aaron had, that Caleb had,
that Joshua had, that Miriam had, that Plenty
had at that time, If the Spirit of God does not
transform your heart, then all that the law does
is condemn you. All that the law does is show
you how little you care for Him, how you bring
death. We know, right? You can think with me,
the people of God often rested on the glory of
the law. They held it up and said, because we
have this, We can set aside all, you know, we
can sit on our spiritual laurels. And we know
that that was the case in Jeremiah's day. I mean,
we have the temple. God himself said that we're
his people. We have Abraham as our father. We've
been circumcised. We belong to the people of
God. That's the case in Jeremiah's day when he
wrote his marvelous works, Jeremiah and Lamentations.
They believed that because they were the chosen
ones, because God had met with their ancestors
there on Mount Sinai and given them the law,
they were good. What happened during Jeremiah's
day? Exile, the judgment of God brought upon
those people, death and condemnation. Think of
our Lord Jesus. Jesus comes to minister. among
the people who had received the law of God. So
many of his words were to the Pharisees or the
scribes. What was the scribe, but literally the
one who was writing out the law of God. Experts,
they knew it all. The theologians of the day,
the people that devoted themselves to the scriptures,
the scribes, the teachers of the law. Did they
have the glorious words of God? Absolutely. They
did They you could say they devoted their lives
to it But they miss God entirely when he was
standing right there in front of them Because
their hearts were not transformed and the letter
killed and Only the spirit gives life the letter
the law the right words and the right actions
In a way, you could say they have a form of glory.
They're a gift of God. But often it's a form
of glory as verse 10, right? It says it's surpassing
and when used wrongly, it's actually a letter
of death. And the truth is that the letter, the
law, the right words and all of that, are often
far from glorious, aren't they? Don't we all
know? We all know that people have done atrocious
things in the name of Christ. We all can admit
that there is reason why our neighbors say, go
to church. Yeah, right. Place is full of people
that are full of themselves. Self -righteous.
self -confident, full of pride, hypocrites. We
all know that there's reason for that because
it is so often the case that we take the letter
of God, the glorious thing that has been given,
and we say, look at me. And we are self, we are
puffed up. We are full of what we do or we don't
do, right? I mean, it's true. The law of God
brings death. It does all over the place. Unless
you receive it with an utterly transformed heart,
life that's transformed by the spirit of God.
Brothers and sisters, this is how they received
it in Moses's day. It is. They received the glory
that was before them with a hard, hard heart.
The wheat and the tares growing together. The
thing about it, the glorious days of the United
Kingdom happened under David and under Solomon.
Glory. Man after God's own heart. A man whose
life led to the destruction of the kingdom. Wheat
and tares. They did this in Jerusalem in Jeremiah's
day. This was the life of the church in Galilee
and Jerusalem in Jesus' own day. This was the
life of the church in Corinth with Paul's day
and these peddlers of the Word of God. And this
is the life of the church today. It has always
been the life of the church. Same old, old covenant
that puffs up and that tears down. It's the old
covenant that meant that Israel had to wander
for 40 years instead of being brought in by God,
by the encouragement of Joshua and Caleb, into
the promised land. It was their hard hearts.
It was the death that came out of those hard
hearts. It's the old covenant that brought about
the destruction of Jerusalem in Jeremiah's day
that caused him to write that masterfully sad
work Lamentations. It's the old covenant that
crucified our Lord. It's the old covenant that
promoted or prompted these letters of recommendation
by these peddlers of the Word of God in Corinth.
It is life outside the Spirit of God. And life
outside the Spirit of God always brings death
and condemnation. Life outside the transformative
work of the Holy Spirit. Let's think about this,
right? Anybody know how many people around the
globe today claim to follow Jesus? 2 .4 billion.
2 .4 billion people. And of course, you may read
the stats of how many people claim to follow
Jesus in our own country. Nobody thinks. No one
thinks that all those people are grabbing onto
Christ and His cross, have put it paramount in
their life, are seeking to put sin to death and
live in the Holy Spirit. It's the wheat and the
tares. And it's always been the wheat and the
tares. It's the old covenant and the new covenant.
It's always been that way. No one thinks that
that 2 .4 billion people have circumcised hearts.
We all know this. What do we make of the last
paragraph and the veil? Well, so verse 12 says,
since we have such a hope, we're very bold. Paul
is very hopeful for this church. Maybe that they
are living in the tension of the old and new
covenant, but he's very hopeful for them. That
word bold there is actually a transliteration
from the Aramaic. So it's just Greek word. It's
the Aramaic word just kind of written with Greek
letters. But he's getting at this idea of veil
specifically and how a veil in that culture Would
mean shame and reproach and while an unveiled
face a face that can be seen looked upon Open
to you and to be received and given meant confidence
and it meant freedom What Moses did in covering
his face was to rebuke the reproach of the people
because they lacked faith. They didn't really
want God. They wanted him to give them certain
things, to do things for them. Their hearts weren't
bent toward him and knowing him, loving him.
The veil was an act of judgment. He was depriving
the people of Israel from the glory of God. as
a way of telling them that if you continue in
your unbelief, neither will you receive God now
or later. If all you want is to take the law
and do with it what you will, be puffed up, look
down at others, whatever have you, you won't
receive really the goodness of it, the glory
of it, and you will not receive the glory of
God. The gaze on the glory of God is a privilege
for those who believe in the reality of God,
the reality of Christ, the promise of His Holy
Spirit within them. What Paul is saying, and
this is kind of wild, what Paul is saying is
that Moses actually preached with no effect to
the people of his generation, and Moses would
have agreed with that. They were the wandering
generation that died with hardness in most of
their hearts. But interestingly, Paul is saying
that actually he preached with great effect in
Corinth. He's trying to recall for them, hey,
you're a letter of the spirit. You can't go back
this other way. Think of what God's done for
you. We can live with unveiled face. You've been
transformed by God. Paul's teachers who had come
in were like the Israelites of old. They were
church folk. They knew the law. Like the Pharisees,
like the scribes, like the lawyers who devoted
themselves to the work of God and they were in
it for themselves. They were in it to be puffed
up. They didn't have God's Holy Spirit transforming
them. This was the Jews back in the day. The
Israelites of old under Moses. This was Jerusalem
under Jeremiah. This was Galilee. This was Jerusalem
under our Lord Jesus. And Paul says it's very
possible that it could be you. Corinth. People
of the Church of Corinth. There's always been
a great deal of unbelief in the church. There
has. There are churches, full churches, whose
folk have no heart for Jesus. Truly. No real
life lived depending on the Holy Spirit. There
are churches where the ministers and the leaders
and all the rest have no saving faith. And Paul,
there's a sense in which Paul likely feared that
if these other leaders grabbed a hold of this
congregation, that is where they were heading.
But he says, no, you've seen. You've beheld the
glory of God because of the work of the Spirit.
The veil has been removed. Walk. Walk keeping
step with the Spirit. Maybe you noticed I put
a little poem attributed to John Bunyan in the
meditation page of your bulletin. It says this,
run, John, run, the law commands, but gives.
I didn't mean to say gives twice there, but gives
us neither feet nor hands. It's unable. It only
brings death. It's unable. Far better news the
gospel brings. It bids us fly and it gives us
wings. Daniel Defoe, the great author of Robinson
Crusoe, he wrote of the church in England in
his day. He said this, wherever God erects a
house of prayer, the devil always builds a chapel
there. And to be found upon examination, the
latter has the larger congregation. Just folk
showing up, not really loving Jesus, just going
through the motions. I believe there are many
in his day who could care less for Christ, who
didn't abide in the spirit, whose lives hadn't
been transformed by the cross. The story that
Moses enacted with his veil, the story that Jeremiah
lived out in his life, the story that brought
about the death of our Lord Jesus himself, is
the story that Paul is speaking to in the church.
And brothers and sisters, we must hear this story.
It is told time and time again for our salvation.
Because it's an invitation for us to examine
ourselves. The Old Covenant and the New Covenant.
The wheat and the tares, side by side, right
there in the church. Letter in the Spirit. I
would ask you please, examine your hearts. Search
them. Ask God to examine your heart. How do you
know if you're of the wheat or the weeds? Good
question, right? How do you know? How can you
have a sense? Am I of the old covenant or the
new? Of the letter or the spirit? What you will
know by your love of the Lord Jesus? You'll know
by the gratitude with which you have for His
death upon the cross? You'll know that this is
a strange way that you know this, which sometimes
I do not enjoy. Often when the cross looms large,
our sin seems more apparent. Maybe the Holy Spirit
has given you a greater and greater sense of
just how much you need the cross of Christ. That's
an indication that you're of the spirit of the
New Covenant. You will know because your love
For the church, Christ's very bride grows. It
doesn't diminish. You'll know by having a real
desire to put sin to death and to live to righteousness,
be done with the old man and put on the new.
You'll know, let me end with this, because you
can say, as Thomas Chalmers did, When the Holy
Spirit grabbed onto him, above all, may I never
recede by one single inch from my Savior. Let
me pray for us. Lord, Holy Spirit, speak to us,
please. invite us into the examined life, and
in so doing draw us please to the cross of Christ,
where the glory of which outshines the letter
so much that the letter's glory feels like nothing
at all. Holy Spirit, move among us, please. God,
I pray that each one of us this afternoon even
might take a moment and just ask you, Lord, am
I of your people? Lord, help me to put to death
sin. Help me to grab on to Jesus. I pray that
we would be a church that delights in the Holy
Spirit's work. That we've been transformed. That
once we were enemies of God, and now we're your
friends. And once we were living in darkness,
and now we're in light. And once we were living
by the letter, and now we're in the spirit. Once
we were of death, now we're of freedom. How would
we be a people? Individuals, a body together.
that delights in this work of your Holy Spirit,
bringing us from the old man to the new, the
old covenant to the new covenant. God, please
draw each one of us into this examination. And
please pour out your Holy Spirit upon us. In
Jesus' name, amen. Thank you for listening to
Second City Sermons podcast. We hope this sermon
has encouraged you to worship God and to celebrate
the gospel of Jesus. Please consider subscribing
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bless.