In this sermon, the speaker discusses a scene from the Bible where Israel is at its lowest point after committing a blasphemous sin against God. Moses, who had seen the wrath of God, had not yet fully understood the goodness and mercy of God. The speaker emphasizes the importance of knowing God in His fullness, including His grace and forgiveness. The sermon highlights the need for believers to have a revelation of the glory of God and to understand how He reacts to sin in order to have a proper relationship with Him.

This message is one of the Times Square Church Pulpit series. It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times Square Church in Manhattan, New York City. Other tapes are available by writing World Challenge, PO Box 260, Lindale, Texas 75771 or calling 903-963-8626. You are welcome to make additional cassettes of this message for free distribution to friends. However, for all other forms of reproduction or electronic transmission, existing copyright laws apply. My message this morning, where do I stand with God? Where do I stand with God? I want you to go to Exodus 33, Exodus 33. Pastor Carter will be home Thursday. He's in, he was in Riga. He's stopping off in Scotland for a few days rest and then be here, be back in the pulpit next Sunday to thank God for the blessing of the Lord on his ministry over there. Exodus 33, let's start with verse, verse 11. And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again to the camp, that his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the temple. I want you to go to verse 18. This is Moses speaking. Let's start with verse 17. The Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken, for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name. And he said, this is Moses speaking, I beseech thee, show me thy glory. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name the Lord before thee, will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. And he said, thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live. The Lord said, behold, there's a place by me, thou shall stand upon a rock, and it shall come to pass when my glory passes by, I will put thee on a cliff to the rock, and I will cover thee with my hand while I pass by, and I will take away my hand, thou shall see my backside parts, but my face shall not be seen. Heavenly Father, I thank you for the word that you placed in my heart this morning, and I pray that you sanctify the vessel so that it can come forth from clean lips and from a clean heart and clean hands. And oh, Lord Jesus, I pray that you do something in our hearts today that will bring hope and joy, something, Lord, that will open our eyes, truth that will open our eyes and our understanding about Christ and who he is, about our Heavenly Father and who he is, your nature, your goodness, your grace, your mercy. Lord, speak clearly through your vessel, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Seems a paradox. Verse 11 says the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, then you skipped over to verse 20, and he said, thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live. And in verse 23, but my face shall not be seen. That sounds like a paradox. One verse says he sees his face, another says you can't see my face. Actually, he did not literally see his face. He's talking about insight. He's talking about revelation. You're seeing me as no man has seen me yet. You're getting an understanding. Looking into my face really is looking into his heart and getting understanding because of the quality time that he had spent with him. Now, this episode, this scene comes at a time when Israel is at its lowest point. They had just, in the previous chapter, remember, constructed a golden calf and they were dancing nude around this calf and they committed an incredible, blasphemous sin against God, against the law of God. It's amazing that while Moses is on the mountaintop receiving the law and he said, thou shalt know that God's before me, not worship idols. And here they are erecting at the very time that he's getting the law. It's only ironic, but it's tragic. And God said to Moses, let me alone, that my wrath may wax hard against them, that I might consume them. Now, Moses accepted responsibility, though he himself had not sinned along with Israel. It was not just the golden calf that had brought the wrath of God down. It was also the twin gods that Stephen said they had carried all the way from Egypt, all the way through the wilderness. They hid them in their tents. Stephen said, you took up the tabernacle of Moloch, the star of your God, Remphan, figures you made to worship them. All this vow that they were giving pretense worship and lip service to God, they had hidden in their tents and maybe under the tent, hidden maybe in the sand, wherever it was. And they would pull them out and they would worship them. And God knew that he knew their hearts were not right with him. Moses knew that God had a right to consume them right on the spot. Even Moses himself is very clear that he was at times so fed up with these people, said were bent on backsliding. He said from the day that God did the part of the land of Egypt until you came into this place, you've been rebellious against the Lord. You've had a bent toward backsliding. And now that backslid to the extent that they had worshiped this golden altar and they were dancing in a delirium around this altar, this false God. And Moses knew that God in his anger had every right to consume them from one end of the camp to the other. And probably Moses, knowing human nature, saying, God, I'm fed up with these people, too, even though he prayed that God would not take his spirit or rather his presence away. There had to be something rise up in him. He said, I know that because we have sinned and now Moses is representative of all the people, he stands before God and Moses himself broke the law. Moses himself came down and when he saw what's happened and in a human anger, his anger waxed hot. The Bible said he cast it down and broke the law. Now, Moses himself, though he did not worship the idol, he stood before God. He was a meek man. He was a godly man. He was a righteous man. He was a precious man. But the Bible says very clear that all the righteousness of man is unacceptable in the sight of God. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And so Moses represents representing the body, God's body, God's church here on Earth and God's people have sinned grievously. And the Lord now has this indictment against him. He says, I want you to just leave me alone. I'm going to consume them. I'm going to raise up another people. I've had it with this people. They have provoked me time and time again. And this time I'm going to deal with them severely. This can't go on. But this left Moses in the dilemma. He had a problem. He says, God, you said that you know me, that I found grace in your eyes. And I have spent such quality time with you. I've been very intimate with you. You see, we're talking about intimacy. Here's a man who knew intimacy. If any man knew what intimacy was, this man knew. But he said, in spite of my intimacy with you, in spite of all that I know about you, he said, I know something of your wrath. I said it all. I stood in awe when I saw how you dealt with this stubborn man, Pharaoh, and how you dealt with the sins of Egypt. And I've seen your hand, your mighty hand of judgment. He said, and I know you at the Red Sea. I know you as a deliverer. I see how you care for your people. He said, I know that I've seen that side of you, Lord. But he says, I have a problem. I don't know you now in this crisis. I don't know how you're going to react to our sin. No one has sinned as we have sinned against such light and such love. I don't know you now how you're going to react. Are we still, is Israel still in grace with you? Are you really going to cut us off? I don't know you. And he says, oh, God, show me, show me who you are. And that's that that is very, show me thy way that I may know thee. Verse 13 in chapter 33. And in the original Hebrew, show me thine own self. And the Hebrew word is heart. He said, I have to know your heart. Look at me, please. He's a friend of God. The Bible said he speaks face to face. In other words, he's intimate, that speaks of intimacy. And yet he still does not fully understand the heart of God. He doesn't know his heart. You can be very intimate with the Lord because you are soaking in truth. You're receiving the word. But there's not this urgent cry in the heart. Show me how you react. Show me this side of you, this nature of you. Show me how you're going to react to me if I find myself surprised by sin, if suddenly I'm overwhelmed by sin and I find myself at a golden calf in my life. How are you going to react? Because I don't know you in that way. I've known something of your love, I've known something of your protection, I've known something of your provision, but I don't know you now. I there was a fear in him. How are you going to react? How do I stand before you now? What is my position with you? And this is what happens when we sin. You may know God and folks, there are people that have known God, that have walked with God for years. They've walked in holiness. They are pure, godly people. But the enemy comes in one day like a flood and a period of unbelief. Unbelief is a horrible sin. It's as bad or maybe worse than adultery, fornication, pornography. Unbelief kept Israel out of the promised land. And what happens when I go through a period of unbelief and sometimes, you see, intimacy can let you down. You can be a friend of God and sometimes not even want to hear his voice. You can provoke friendship. You can defile intimacy. You have to go beyond intimacy. You have to go beyond revelation. You have to come to a place where you say, oh God, I have to know you. I have no hope unless I know how you're going to react to me now. Or some of you now have sinned. You sit here now. This past week, you have defiled yourself in some way. You are even now sitting here under the weight of your sin. And you don't know how God is going to react because the first tendency is to run. It's to run. I've failed God and his wrath is going to be upon me now. Now, put yourself into this scene, if you will, please. Caught in a defiling sin, just as Israel was. Be it a big sin or what you call a little sin. There's no such thing as a little sin. Sin is sin in the sight of God. And the smallest sin, we deserve wrath and judgment for even defiling thoughts. Sin is sin in the sight of God. There's no measurement of sin other than the cross. We hear our conscience, this voice that Israel hears now. This voice comes and you hear this and you take it as the voice of God. I chose you. I walked with you. I was intimate with you. You loved my word, you loved me. I put my arms around you and I picked you up and I carried you. And now you sinned against me. You have sinned against light, you have sinned against my love. Now, I'm going to have to just break relationship with you. And this is what your conscience can tell you if it hasn't been grounded in the hope and revelation of who God is and is Christ. And so this voice comes raging in. I'm going to have to find another people who will walk in holiness. You walk for so long, but you fail. Some of you here hearing that. There was a time you walked close with God, you were praying, you were seeking God, and now you're cold, you're indifferent and you have this sense, well, God has cut me off. We're in that dilemma that Moses faced. You see, there comes a time when it's no longer about intimacy because you see, you can be very, you can be intimate with your friend. He's a friend of God. You can be intimate, you can have a friend. But you can sometimes just say, I just don't feel like I want to be with my friend. I don't feel like talking. And I don't want to hear. You can cut a friend off. You say, well, God's not like that, but we are. We're the ones that sometimes cut off his voice. You see, you can defile friendship. You have to go beyond friendship, you have to go beyond intimacy. There's something deeper than there's a greater revelation. Now, if you're really intimate with God and pray for this revelation, you'll get it. And really, if you're truly intimate with God, this will be the cry in your heart. Oh, God, show me your glory. Show me who you are. Not just when things are good, not just when I walk in righteously before you, but when I fail you, when there's rebellion and when I find a golden calf in my life. How do you react to me then? He says, I don't know you in this kind of crisis. Moses said, Lord, if I don't have this revelation, if I don't know where I stand before you and if your presence leaves me, we might as well just dig our graves right here and die. We're not going to go on because where else do we go? Folks, when you sin, when you're a believer and you sin, where else can you go? Where do you go if there's no grace? Where do you go if there's no hope? Where do you go if you have this concept that God is going to cut you off and leave you and find another people? Where do you go? There's nothing. He said, there's no place to go. God said to Moses, I'm going to show you my glory. I'm going to show you. I want to go to chapter 33, verse 19 again. And he said, I will make all my goodness. See, Moses is not crying out. Verse 18, I beseech thee. That's a great cry and prayer of his heart. Show me thy glory. Beloved, that's where intimacy has to be the cry of an intimate heart. God, I'm here with you and I give you all the time that you want and need and all that I desire and I'll give you my heart. But I want to come out of this intimacy knowing you in your fullness. I want to know your character. I want to know how you're going to react, not only to me, but to those who I preach to who are converted and serve you and then they fail. How and what do I say? Oh, this has been the crime behind me. So many people, pastors and others that have so failed God after years, former drug addicts became team challenge directors and became evangelists. And it took a terrible fall, mixed up in pornography, mixed up in all kinds of sins. And I've heard them say it's no use. God's given up on me. There's no hope. And they don't even try. I'm beyond help. That's what some of you sitting here now, those hearing me, you've said for me, there's no hope. I've defiled my God and I've sinned, blasphemous before him beyond hope. Verse 19. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee. And I'll be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. He said, thou canst not see my face for thou shall not see me and live for no man to see me and live. The Lord said, behold, there's a place by me. Thou shall stand upon a rock and it shall come to pass that while my glory passes by that I will put thee in a cliff of the rock and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by. Now, the original says in the original Hebrew, I will hide you in a cavity of the rock and I will defend you with the protection of my power until I pass by. Now, let me give you the revelation. Listen to it very closely. The Lord said, yes, you failed me, but there's a rock and there's a cavity in that rock. There's a place that I'm going to put you securely. I want you to come immediately. Don't linger in doubt and fear. You failed me. Don't linger there in that place and don't question anymore, because I'm going to give you a revelation of who I am. Folks, that rock is Christ, the Bible says, and we are hidden in Christ. When you fail God, when you sin, don't linger in your unbelief and doubt. Quickly run to Jesus. Get back on the rock. Get to the cavity that he said. And God says, I will put my hand on you. See, I picture this rock at the side of a raging ocean, just like the cliffs, the Rock of Gibraltar. And there's a cavity, there's a cave, there's a place that he's placed you there. And down here is this raging sea. And the Lord said, I'm going to put my hand on you. I'm going to cover you and I'm going to protect you until you get the revelation. You don't understand me yet. You don't know my grace. You don't know how loving and forgiving and merciful I am. What was the revelation? Jesus is the rock. What was the revelation of the glory of God? Go to chapter 34, verse 5. And the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. Now, see, he asked for a revelation of the glory of God. And here it is, verse six. And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiven iniquity and transgression of sin. I'm going to stop right there. We'll take the rest of that last verse in just a moment. But first, I want this. I want you to see it. God says, look, I've got a place on a rock and beloved Paul, the scripture says our fathers all drank of the same spiritual drink. They all drank of the same spiritual rock that followed them. That rock was Christ. The rock was Christ. You see, when you give your heart to Jesus, you are in Christ. You're in Christ. And when you fail, you are still you still have available to you that covenant promise of God in Christ Jesus. And the Bible says that the revelation. Now, remember, even though at this time Christ was yet not incarnate in man, he was in in the father. Christ was in the father. The essence of Christ was in the father. Jesus, the Christ was in the father from the beginning, the scripture says. And though he was not incarnate in my in man, he was not yet born in the human flesh. Yet this is a revelation of who Jesus is, his nature. This this is what Christ is. This is what the revelation, this is the greater revelation. This is what intimacy finally has to bring you to this revelation. The Lord God, merciful, gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. Glory be to God. That is the fullest revelation of Jesus Christ. All that is in the father is in the son. Jesus Christ is mercy. He is graciousness. He is abundant in forgiveness, loving kindness, forgiving transgressions and sin. This is his nature. This is the one revelation that you and I have to fully understand. This is what Moses did not know. He did not understand the great mercy, the graciousness of God. That's very evident because in his holy anger, the Bible said when he came down, Moses' anger waxed hot. He cast the tables out, tablets out of his hands and break them beneath the mount. See, it wasn't God's anger, it was Moses' anger. It says, in fact, folks, as a servant of God. God help me, if I'm a minister, that I just come and rail against the people when they sin, and I try to take revenge, and not let God do it, but I try to take revenge, and I come with a human zeal, a human anger against sin. If it's my flesh, it's going to end up as it did here. You watch Moses come down, and he sees this, and in his hot anger, he crosses the law, he breaks the law. His anger was sin, a meek, holy man. And this is one of the reasons, because that same temper broke out when he smoked the rock, when he was supposed to speak to the rock. And God kept him out of the promised land because he said, you've transgressed against me. And here's the picture now, in anger, he's grinding the calf to powder, and he's making the people drink it with their water. He mixes it with their drink, with their water, and they drink it. You see him condemning Aaron publicly before the people, and Aaron cries out, let not your anger, the anger of my Lord wax so hot. And the next scene is the slaughter. And he tells Levi, he says, go out now, and I want you to tell everyone that's involved, women, teenagers, if it's your wife, kill her. This is what happened. There was a massacre, holy anger. You see, as a pastor, I can come out here, and because I so hate sin, and I know God hates sin. See, I've had that kind of revelation Moses had. He'd seen the wrath of God. He'd seen how God deals with it, because he had not yet had the revelation of the goodness of God, of who God fully was. He was giving a half gospel. He was giving, he was misrepresenting who God was. He was not preaching or teaching God in his fullness. And you can have that kind of gospel. You can live that way. Was this all approved of God? The Bible doesn't say here. But what does it say to Israel? What does it say to all the world around? What does it say to the heathen? When you sin against this Lord, you're in his family, you're one of his children, and that you sin, he's going to make you drink a bitter cup? He going to kill your wife? He going to send judgment on your children? This is the image. This is living by fear alone. And it's a concept of God that's not complete. It's not a revelation that's complete. Yes, he's just. Yes, he hates sin. But he's also a merciful God. God is also love. He's compassionate. He's forgiving. He said to Moses, because you transgressed against me among the children of Israel. You didn't sanctify me in the midst of the children of Israel. You'll see the land, but you won't go in. There's a verse that I want you to lay hold of. Don't turn there, but you can mark it down if you're keeping notes. First Peter 315. Now, what you listen very close to these words, because this ties it into the New Testament. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and be ready at all. And be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and reverence. Now, I say it again, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Doesn't say sanctify yourself. Sanctify the Lord God in your heart. We say do not misrepresent God to your own heart. Sanctify the Lord in your own heart. You have to have a revelation. You have to seek it. You've got to have this. Basically, there's no more hope. The reason for your hope is that you have had an experience. And I wonder if you can tell your friends on the job. I wonder if you can tell your Christian friends of a time that you failed God miserably. You had a golden calf in your life and you came back to the rock. You went into the cleft of the rock and you felt his protective hand. And you have tasted his love and forgiveness and mercy. And now you're growing in the Lord and you've been brought back to his embrace. There's no healing outside of the embrace of God. None. You have that hope now because you've sanctified the Lord. Now you have a revelation of that love. And you dare not go out and preach that God is going to destroy it. And God's mad at you because you've sinned. Not when you've had such grace. And when people ask you why you have a smile on your face and why the joy of the Lord is in your heart and you can tell them they're asking you a reason for your hope. The reason for my hope is that I have a revelation. I have a loving father. He's not only a God of wrath, but he's my father. And I serve a Christ. I am in Christ and he's forgiven me. He's restored me. And I'm walking in his love. Glory be to God. You have to have that revelation. Sanctify the Lord in your heart. Hallelujah. Remember what Moses prayed? Lord, I beseech thee, show me your glory. This is the glory of God. When you talk about the glory of God, I want to see your glory, Lord. What is the glory? It's Christ. Period. For in him, all that is in the father is in Christ. So the revelation that was given to him is a revelation of the coming Christ. It's the revelation that you and I live in in his fullness, the revelation of his mercy, his love. Now, there's another part in verse 7, chapter 34, and it will by no man's clear or acquit the guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the children's children, unto the third and fourth generation. Now, what does that say? Lord said, here's my glory. Here's the revelation. I'm I'm ready and willing to forgive. I'm so anxious. I'm so ready and willing to forgive. Don't run from me. He told Moses, come up early in the morning. In other words, don't linger. Come up quickly now. Come up to the rock. I've got a place beside me. That's what the Bible says. I have a place beside me. It's in the rock. He said, now come and don't you still don't understand the fullness of it. If you just come back now and you come this time when you come back to me, I'm going to give you a hope that will keep you. You don't have to go through this anymore. I'm going to give you power over your habit. I hate your sin. But if you will repent quickly, come now with a repentant broken heart. Come to me with godly sorrow. Come to me now. Run back to my embrace. Come on back into the cavity of the rock. And I'll protect you. I'll keep you from the lies of the devil. I'll keep you from guilt and condemnation and fear. I'll keep you if you'll trust me now. And if you'll pray and seek for revelation of my heart, I'll show you my heart. I'll show you love like you've never seen. I'll show you mercy like you've never known. I will show you my long suffering so that not only do you experience, but it can flow out of you to the world. It can flow out of you. You will not be judged, but you will not see God only as a judge. You'll see him as your loving father. Glory to God. Folks, this is what the whole Bible is talking about, bringing us into this full, greater revelation of our Lord. I wonder, have you sanctified the Lord to your heart yet? Do you have this hope, this abundant mercy that he has promised to us? I want you to go to chapter 34 and read verses 8 through 10. Folks, don't get ahead of me. Don't look at it yet. Am I looking up this way? What I'm going to read to you next has so blessed my soul and it has totally impacted my ministry. I know better now than I've ever known since the Lord called me to reach pastors as well as minister here in this church. I now have a clear revelation of what God wants me to preach. And the dilemma has always been, all right, if we sanctify the Lord to our hearts and we have this full revelation, sanctify means a clear vision, no confusion. It's a clear revelation of who Jesus is. That's my hope. I know that he's forgiving and loving. I know he hates my sin, but he's my father and he's going to bring me through this. And how is that person going to react? You see, there were times, especially in my early ministry, well, I can't preach that because then if I preach such grace, it's going to sound like easy grace. It's going to make it seem like people are going to just take that and say, well, he's so merciful and they won't have the mandate or the urgency to forsake their sin. They may take a slight look at sin and not see it in its exceeding sinfulness and wickedness. And maybe they'll take advantage of it. This is what was thrown in the face of Paul. He said, we've sinned, the grace may abound. He said, God forbid. But that was the dilemma then. It's still the dilemma. Every pastor faces it. Now, I believe God has called me to expose sin and I intend to expose sin. But I also intend to have the full revelation, the fuller vision of a full revelation of who God is and who Christ is, that he is merciful, that he's forgiving. If you just turn and not run and come back to his mercy and his grace. But what happens to a Christian that just comes running back? I don't care what you have done. I don't care how evil, how deep in sin you've fallen. You come back to him and believe that this is his nature. This is who he is. It's not what he does. It's who he is. He doesn't just show you mercy. He is mercy. He doesn't just show you love. He is love. He can't change what he is. He's unchangeable. He will always be love. He will always be grace, even though he's justice as well. So if I say I know who he is, I'm intimate with him, then I better know the fullness of the revelation. That's where I'm that's what I'm pursuing. But then here's how God answered it for me. Verses eight to ten. How does Moses react? Now he has this wonderful vision. There's this wonderful revelation of this side of God, this attribute of God. Oh, I see him now in his mercy. I wonder if he hadn't thought now, why didn't I take Aaron aside? Why didn't I hope and pray that he could be with me here on this rock? Why didn't I wait before I pulled out my sword until I had a full vision of who he is? I wonder if there were you see, he had transgressed the Lord. God said, you misrepresented me to the people. I don't ever want to misrepresent him. I don't want just a hard message. I want the full revelation of the greatness of God. And what does that produce? Look, look in verse eight. Moses made host haste, bowed his head toward the ground and worshiped it, put his face on the ground. And you find in the next verse, you find he said, if now I have found grace and I said, oh, Lord, let my Lord, I prayed it leads to more prayer. Go among us for it's a stiff necked people and pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us for thine inheritance. You see what's happening here now? This man is on his face and he's praying now and he's admitting the sins like he's never admitted before. It's a stiff neck and pardon our iniquity and our sin. He's no longer up to this time. He's saying they have sinned. This is your people. They have sinned. Now he's saying pardon our sin. He identifies with it now. He sees the exceeding sinfulness of his own sin. It's brought him to his face before God. Hallelujah. That means that I can I can keep this hope in my heart and know that it's not going to make me easy on sin. And if I really accept his love, it's going to put me on my face and thanksgiving and worship. So God, what kind of God are you that could love me in spite of my failure, spite of my sin and bring me back to you? Oh, what a God we serve. And that's the kind of God you should take to the job. That's the kind of revelation to the streets. That's the revelation of who he is. I know this revelation has done something in my heart. It's put me on my face in praise and thanksgiving and worship. It's shown me more than ever the exceeding sinfulness of sin. And there's been a cry in my heart that goes out, oh, God, don't ever let me depart from you again. Don't ever depart from me as you promised to be with me to the end. What a mighty Christ we serve. What a glorious savior here this morning to deliver you from any and all sin. He can take you away from that golden calf. But he's not going to make you drink the water. Have you sinned? He's not. You know, I sit around worrying, well, where's the judgment going to fall? If something happens, I know I know how Christians are. If there's failure, if they sin and something goes wrong, if somebody dies. Oh, God's judgment. God, that's it. What's next? Oh, God, what's that? And they live in fear and their fingernails are bitten down to the flesh. Now, that's not something to chew your fingernails and not put you down on. That may not be because of that. But in all seriousness, we run from God. Stop running. Come back to his grace. You're on a rock, friends. God didn't cut you off. I want you to stand, please. Lord Jesus, I pray that you would put that prayer on our lips. Deep in our heart. Oh, God, show me your glory. Show me Christ and all of his righteousness. Lord, show me that merciful Savior. Lord, I need mercy. I need grace. You said we're to come bold and with confidence to your throne to receive mercy and grace to help in every hour of need. And we are needing that we come boldly with confidence. Even those, Lord, that have sinned, they can come boldly now with confidence to your throne and say, Father, I have sinned. Jesus, I've sinned. But I come. I'm coming to the rock. Put me in the cleft of the rock. Put your hand on me. Cover me and protect me until I have this full revelation. God, I still don't know what I should know. I'm still weak in my understanding. But, oh, God, I do hear the word. Come home. Come quickly. Don't linger. Come back to my grace. Come to my love. I the invitation I'm given is going to be very limited. I don't want anybody to come to this altar. This we call this the altar area. That's just me coming forward to make a declaration of confession and need. If you do not know Christ. If you've never received his Lord and Savior and you've been convicted by the Holy Spirit and something of the spirit, the spirit of God has been drawing and warming your heart and wooing you, you are invited now in the annex. You can go into the hallway and the ushers will show you how to get here to stand in front of us right here. And those up in the balcony, you can go down the stairs on either side and those here in the outcrop, you can come if you don't know Christ. Secondly, you knew Christ and everything I've said today, you receiving it. It's just like an arrow that's got right into your heart and said, oh, God, you knew I needed this because you have failed the Lord and you have never really accepted his love and forgiveness. And you've grown cold and you're walking away rather than toward him. You're getting so lukewarm and then cold. I invite you to come back to this grace and this love, but please don't come. Now, let me tell you something. If you are a true believer and you believe that you're on the rock, Christ Jesus, what I told you now should make you rejoice. You should be able to stand right in your seat and say, Lord Jesus, right now, cleanse me, cleanse me. I'm in Christ Jesus. I've confessed my sin. You'll be able to do that standing right at your seat. But there are some of you that do not, you kind of, you're not mad at God, but you don't understand. You've never had this revelation. You said, Brother Dave, I have got to take a stand. I want you to pray for me. I invite you to come up in the balcony and even in the annex. Come and join these that are coming now. Stand in the front and we will pray with you for this revelation. If you have absolutely, if you've gone absolutely the place where you say, I, I've wondered if God could even forgive me. I felt abandoned. I felt that God had, you may not feel that God forsaken you, but you say, God, just not talking to me. God's not walk. I don't feel his presence in my life anymore. I look this way, just a quick word to you. Listen, you have to understand, God's not mad at you. Can you say that God's not mad at me? God's not mad at me. I feel his wooing and his love in my heart. You respond to that love. Now, your part is to confess. Your part is just to come now. Say, Jesus, I've come back to have you put your arm around me and embrace me. Remember what I said? There's no healing outside of his embrace, outside of his love. You can't be healed any other way than by his love. And he loves you now. And will you, by your head, just pray this prayer out of your heart. Lord Jesus, I come now to accept your love, your mercy and your forgiveness. Forgive me, Jesus, for going my own way and doing my own thing. Lord Jesus, there's been a golden calf in my life and I want it brought down. And I want power to serve you with all my heart. Forgive me. Put your arms around me and let me know your love. Now, pray this prayer with me. Lord Jesus, show me who you are. Show me all of your love and your grace and your hatred for sin. Thank you for saving, bringing me back. Now, give me power and grace to live for you. Now, let me pray for you. Heavenly Father, I thank you for these that have come humbly and broken before you. Lord, I don't know how the miracle happens. You said it's like the wind that comes and we don't know where it comes from and where it goes. But when it comes, it's a spirit that transforms us. It's the spirit of God that comes out of seemingly nowhere and suddenly sweeps into our heart and brings a revelation of Jesus. And we're changed from that day on. Holy Spirit, give an understanding now and let them pray this prayer. Oh, God, show me who you are. Show me how I stand before you through the blood. I'm cleansed now. You've made me clean by a prayer of faith and confession of my mouth. And God, they sorrow for my sin. Lord, I've repented. And now I can trust you to give me your grace, your long suffering, your mercy. Would you just, in your own words, give Jesus thanks right now. Just say, thank you, Jesus. I give you thanks. I thank you, Lord, from the depths of my heart. This is the conclusion of the message.