In Genesis, chapter four, there's this verse at the end of it. It's just given a little bit of a cataloging of different, just different things that were happening with humanity. There's a story of Cain and where Cain's life had taken him after he had killed his brother, murdered him. There's a story of a few other people. There's this guy named Lamech.

He married two wives, thought that was okay, killed a guy because he bumped into him on the sidewalk or something like that. The guy injured him in some way, and he took it as a cause to be able to turn around and slay the man, to murder him. And then he has this bombastic speech to his two wives. He says, listen to me, womans. If it was just one wife, he would have said woman, but it was two of them.

That's funny. Sorry. He says, I killed a man for wounding me, a young man for hurting me. Now, if Cain is avenged seven times, then lamech 77 times. Interestingly, when one of Jesus disciples asked him how much he should forgive a brother that sins against him seven times, Jesus says something that I believe is reflective of this.

He says, and our translations get it mixed up. And I think the solution is saying, what did it say in the Old Testament? If this man was so bombastic to say, I should get avenged 77 times, I believe that's the proper translation of how many times Jesus told us to forgive the one who sins against us. In other words, where Lamech errored, you forgive, you make it right. But then after that, it talks about Adam and Eve having another son that they named Seth because he replaced in their minds the one that Cain had killed.

They have another son in place of Abel. And then a son was born to Seth. And here's what the last verse of Genesis four says, and a son was also born to Seth, whom he named Enosh. At that time, people began to call on the name of the Lord. Now, this translation, which is the same one that's in the Bible, and the rack on your pew says, call on the name of the Lord.

It says, worship the name of the Lord. But I prefer where it says, they began to call on the name of the Lord. This sounds good, right? People are calling on the name of God. People are saying, lord, we need you.

Lord, this world is so bad. There's so much going on, you know, people killing each other, people taking multiple wives, doing all this stuff. That doesn't seem to be what we are designed to do as human beings. And, Lord, we need you. We can echo that cry, that calling on the name of the Lord, we can be alongside of them and say, lord, we need you.

And yet, at the same time, I read this in a new light this week. It made me sad. As I was preparing for this message, it struck me that's not what was the original plan or design. You see, God's plan for humanity was found in the garden. I mean, if we were to look back a page, just look back into Genesis, chapter three, we see this time where Adam and Eve, right after they had sinned and done what God had told them not to do, God shows up in the garden.

God shows up to go talk with them, as he had been doing regularly. The plan, the idea of God wasn't this separation from sin and all that we've done wrong, but the plan for God was to dwell with us. God would come down from his dwelling place to our dwelling place. He would walk with the humans that he had created seemingly daily or something to that. They expected to see God.

They didn't just hope that maybe they would get a chance to somehow talk with God. They expected that each day in the garden of Eden that they would be with God. They expected that it was normal. And then after they sinned, they realized there was a barrier, a gap, a separation between them and God, because they had sinned against him. And they hid themselves in the garden that he made.

They made leaves. They sewed them the fig leaves into a garment that they could use as camouflage to blend in with God's garden, to hide from God. Their sin drove them to hide from God. How often do we think we need to hide from God? How many times have you heard somebody, maybe you've talked with them and you've invited them to Christ.

You've invited them to church or something like that, and they say, no, that can't be me. You don't know what I've done. I can't go in there. I wouldn't fit in, or I can't go there. You don't know me.

That's not really the place for someone who's done what I've done. There's people that think they can't go to church until they fix their lives. And if they fix themselves up enough, then they could go into church. Oh, it breaks my heart, because at the point where people begin to call on the name of the Lord, shows us how far we've actually gone. You see, before that God's original plan for humanity was for us to just talk with him.

But now we have to call on his name. We have to invite him into our stuff, into our midst. So then we flip a few pages. You know, this is one big overarching story right through the scriptures. As we look at it, it's one story that just keeps connecting all the way through, and we keep seeing these little connection points.

So what we're going to do for the next couple minutes, few minutes here is touch down in a couple different scriptures. The next one is in Exodus chapter 20. You might be familiar two with Exodus 20 because the ten Commandments are found there. You're familiar with the first dozen or 1617 verses or so, but you get down to verse 18, Exodus 2018, and there's something brilliant going on. Literally bright, brilliant.

All the people were seeing the thundering and lightning, and they heard the sound of the ram's horn and they saw the mountain smoking. Now, folks, I was just in the Smoky mountains recently, and what we call smoke is really just this water vapor that just kind of floats and goes around. I don't believe that's what they were talking about. This is like a mountain on fire, and yet they're not sure about fire. There's lightning and thunder.

I don't know if God was setting off wildfires. That's actually part of his creation. He sets off wildfires as a way of caring for and balancing out the ecosystems in the nature that he created. I know your news tries to blame it on people and on things that we've done, but really, God uses lightning to start these things and to cleanse his earth. And so he's doing that and he's setting this off.

And the people are worried. They're scared. They hear the ram's horn. They see the mountains smoking. And when they saw it, they trembled with fear and kept their distance.

Presence of God was on the mountain, and the people of God stayed away. They were like my daughter and her friends with the mouse. Chuck E. Cheese. Just a little wave.

Stay back. Do you hear how sad this is? Moses said to the people, do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you so that you do not. Oh, folks, don't miss this part. We like to read over the parts in our scriptures that talk about our sin, don't we?

We like to look at the parts in the Bible that talk about our sin. And we think it's about those other people. We think it's about the people that we see that are protesting things and blocking roads and throwing bricks through buildings and doing drugs and doing all these things. We like to think that it's those people's sin, right? We like to think that it's the people that fly a different banner or flag than we like to see flown.

We like to think it's the people that are messing up the laws in our nation that are ruining the country that we've grown up in. We like to think it's those people's sin that the Bible's talking about, when really we have to look first at our own. Oh, Jesus said, how dare you try to take the speck out of somebody else's eye when you've got an entire log hanging out of yours. Every time you turn your head, that log's smacking people. Your sin is so blatantly obvious to everyone else but you.

And you think, oh, well, I can see that speck in their eye. No, you can't. You can't see anything for lack of proper vision because your vision is so clouded by the sin that's right in your own hands. Isaiah, the prophet, when he was getting his commissioning from God, he's up in heaven in Isaiah, chapter six. And he's there.

And when he sees the glory of God, when he hears them singing on, on repeat, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty. The temple begins shaking. The smoke is filling up. The train of the Lord's robe fills the temple. And Isaiah all of a sudden wakes up.

I know we use that term, woke today. That means something else, I don't know. But Isaiah all of a sudden was awakened. He woke up quickly, and he realized one thing, his sin. And then he realized that he wasn't alone because his people were also sinful.

And he confesses now, listen to me here. He confesses his sin and theirs. Now, he can't repent of their sin. You can't repent of someone else's sin. You can confess their sin, though.

I don't know if you understand this. We had this theological discussion sitting right in this area last night, my family and I, because my daughter said, dad, I'm telling you guys, you got to be reading your word because this kid's going to start teaching you pretty soon. If you don't, she's going to be the one leading you. I won't. She wanted to put a music stand here.

She wanted to wear a microphone so that she could read the word of God. She has her, her Bible that she got for Easter last week. And it's not just a storybook, it's the full text of the Bible. Now she's graduated to that. She's been reading it almost every night.

And she wanted to read that now, she called it preaching. She was just reading the word of God. And I thought, sometimes I need to just shut up and maybe read through it a little bit. I'm telling you, this child is going to begin teaching us very soon. In a way, she already is.

Now, don't tell her that. She starts to think that she knows more than she knows. We're just going to keep that a secret for right now. But I'm letting you see the future. I'm not a prophet.

I'm just letting you see what's happening here. She says, dad, I'm confused. I can't confess someone else's sin, can I? And then she started, I know this because I do it. It was a proud dad moment.

She starts replaying the scriptures in her mind. Do you do this? Do you have the word of God living in you so much that you can start going through the scriptures and saying, hang on, let me come up with some examples. She says, well, moses confessed the people's sin. I said, you're right, he did.

And then I brought her to Isaiah. I said, let's read the word of God. We go to Isaiah six. And I said, isaiah confessed the people's sin. There's others that confessed the sins of the people, but only you can repent for your own sin.

But if you don't repent. Jesus talked about this to his people, to the Israelites, and they were worried because this crooked, evil ruler named Pilate, the one that crucified Jesus, Pilate had killed some Galileans that were having a sacrifice on the altar to God. He killed them, drained some of their blood and mixed it with the blood of their sacrifices. He said, oh, you want to be one with your God? You can be one with the sacrifices offered to him.

That's basically what he was doing. And he did that. And Jesus followers, they said to him, they said, lord, what about those Galileans that Pilate murdered? What about them? He says, oh, do you think that they were worse sinners than other Galileans?

But unless you repent, you too will perish. Now, he wasn't threatening them. He wasn't saying, oh, well, something bad like that will happen to you as well. He was saying, we will die in our sins if we don't repent of our sins. We can repent of our own sins.

We must repent of our own sins first. And if you're in a place where you think that you don't have any, then you need to repent of that one first. And if you think that there's people in the world as you see them, and you go around and you say, man, that person needs Jesus. Yes. But if you go around and you start saying, man, that person needs to stop doing that thing, they need to stop sinning, they need to stop living together.

They need to stop doing this thing and that thing. No, the first thing that they need is to repent of their rejection of Jesus Christ. That's the first. That's the primary thing. That's the only thing.

Once we've repented, if somebody hasn't accepted Christ, they need to repent of that. The spirit will begin dealing with them on the other areas of their life. If you've never repented of your sins, if you never accepted Christ as your savior, you're missing the point of everything. God's plan for humanity would be that we would come to salvation. The people here kept their distance from God.

In Exodus chapter 20, they kept their distance. But listen to verse 21. There has to be one, doesn't there? Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. Ooh, if I was a better preacher, I'd preach an entire sermon on that one verse.

If I was one of these. These great men of history that preached sermons that led thousands of people to Christ throughout the land, I would focus on that one verse. But Moses grew near to the thick darkness where God was. That place where nobody else wanted to be, where everybody was scared to go. Moses went there.

Are you willing to go there, folks? Are you willing to go there? The answer is no. Say no. God will work with you on that.

If you want to go in that thick darkness where God is, then be about it. Amen. In Exodus 33, just a couple pages over, down, in verse eleven, it says, the result of this fellowship that Moses had with God, this closeness that Moses had with God. Here's how it turns out to be. The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, the way a person speaks to a friend.

Moses would return to the camp, but his servant, Joshua, the son of nun. I guess he didn't have a dad. I don't know. I can't resist making that dad joke. Sorry.

That's too. Apologize. It's N U N. That was his father's name. I appreciate it, Mary.

I heard that. Laughter. Joshua, son of nun, did not leave the tent. Moses decided he had to go back out and lead the people. Moses had to go and leave the presence of God because he felt that he had a job to do.

I don't know how things would have been different. If Moses would have stayed there in the tent. I don't know. But he left the tent of meeting. Where the presence of God was visibly there.

But his disciple, his charge, the young man, Joshua that Moses was leading, stayed there at the tent. He stayed in the presence of God. Joshua was a great leader. History tells us that he led really well. There was one problem.

That Joshua. One thing he didn't do, one problem. Do you know what that was? Never tells us who he discipled. It stopped with him.

Moses, the great leader, the great man of God, took Joshua under his wing, led him well, led him literally into the presence of God. And Joshua didn't pass it on. He kept it to himself, and he kept it just him and God. And he thought, that's sufficient, folks. If we leave the presence of God and go to serve others, fine.

But you better be bringing someone with you to serve. You better be teaching the next generation. You better be continuing that on. Because otherwise, like the people of Israel, it stops with this generation. After Joshua died, we see in the book of Judges the continuing of the story.

And it says, every man did whatever he thought was best. They stopped following God. Turn our page one more to Exodus 34.

We see this. Moses came down from Mount Sinai. With the two tablets of the testimony in his hand. When he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face was shining. While he talked with them.

Remember, he'd been in the presence of God. His face was radiating the glory of God.

He didn't even recognize it. He didn't realize it. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses and his face was shining, they were afraid to approach him. But Moses called to them. So Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and Moses spoke to them.

After this, all the Israelites approached, and he commanded them all that the Lord had spoken to him on Mount Sinai. When Moses finished speaking with them, he would put a veil over his face. It's like putting a. Think of the cloth shopping bags that they have when you go to the grocery store that they want you to use for your groceries. He grabbed one of those and put it over his face.

He put a bag over his head so that they wouldn't have to be face to face. With the radiant glory of the presence of God. They were content to just go on living how they were.

When they would see the face of Moses and his face was shining, he would put the veil on his face again until he went to speak with the Lord. They didn't want to be in the presence of God. Folks, I've worried that we're the same way today. So many times. We're content to have a few of the crumbs off of his table.

We're content for the manna to fall from heaven for the daily bread, but we really don't want the intimacy of the presence of God. I'll tell you what, if that's where you are today, you're really not going to enjoy heaven. If you're content to just have a few crumbs from the table, if you're content to just have a little bit of a rumor of the presence of God, or a little bit of remembrance of when God came down, or that revival that happened in 1970, or that happened a year or two ago in Asbury, or read about them from the scottish revivals, the welsh revivals, the american frontier revivals. If you're just content to read stories about how those things happened, then you'll only have that. You'll be like the Israelites saying to Moses, can you just cover up the brightness that's shining from your face?

We really don't want to get that involved. We're good. Moses, with you having the relationship with God and you telling us about it. Moses, we're okay if you get close to God or if Joshua gets close to God, but can you just kind of keep him farther away from us and just report back to us how that went? That's how these people were.

So we get to Jesus. I told you, we're going to touch down in a few places Jesus preparing his disciples for when he's about to be crucified. He says to them in John 14 one, do not let your hearts be distressed or troubled. You believe in God. Believe also in me.

Now, there are many dwelling places in my father's house. Otherwise I would have told you, because I am going away to make ready a place for you. And if I go to make ready a place for you, now listen to this. I will come again and take you to be with me so that where I am, you may be also. Yeah.

Amen. If you want to know what God's plan for humanity is, a while back, we talked about God's will. What's God's will in your life? What's God's will for the church? Those things.

You want to know what God's plan for humanity is, what he's been doing. We think that we messed it all up whenever mankind sinned or whenever we sin. We think it messes up God's plan, but the scriptures tell us that Jesus was crucified since the foundations of the world. In other words, whenever God was creating this place, he knew that he would send his son to the cross. It didn't come as a surprise when Adam and Eve sinned.

That wasn't God's plan b. His plan a was always Jesus Christ. And his plan was always that first the sake of humanity, that he would use his son's death and his son's resurrection to bring us to him. That Jesus would go and prepare a place for us, and that place would be to dwell where he is. He will come to dwell with us.

Folks, if you don't treasure intimacy with God now, with his holy spirit, with his son Jesus Christ, if you don't treasure that intimacy now, you sure won't like heaven very much because it's a lot of the presence of God. But people, if we can just have a little bit of a desire to live in God's presence now, if we can just have that overwhelming drive, that passion to say, God, I want more of you in my life. Or we don't worry about what are our neighbors going to think about what changed in you? And we're not going to worry about if we got coworkers in there saying, well, somehow you seem to be like a holy roller. All of a sudden you just care about God.

Or why is it that you just go to church on Sundays and you don't take part in the things that we're doing? Why you didn't cut your grass and you should have cut your grass, but you could have done that on Sunday, but instead you went to church. Realize how unimportant everything else seems when we could be in the presence of God, but instead we say, Lord, I really would just like for you to just kind of put a veil over that shining presence of your holy spirit. I really just want to know that you are nearby. I feel more comfortable knowing you are close, but I really don't want those fullness of your presence.

We do that. Shame on us. Maybe not shame on us, but pity on us. Take pity for those of us who say, I'm content where I'm at. You're not content if you're not happy with what seems to be a distance between us and God.

He's not happy with it either. He wants to be with you. He wants to not just be tucked in your pocket for some time where you can pull him out because you need something he doesn't want to just be called on when you're a little bit feeling sick or when you've got a medical problem or when you go to the hospital. He doesn't just want to be there in those times. For sure he is.

Amen. For sure he's there during those times. He doesn't want to just be consulted at times where you say, God, where do you want me to go? What do you want me to do? Oh, he wants to be there in those times for you.

He wants to lead you and guide you. But he doesn't just want to be called on when you need something from him. In the book the God Chasers by Tommy Tenney, he talked about going off and traveling and coming home and then his children wanting to come up and see him. And he says, you know, sometimes I'll bring them a gift home from my travels, a souvenir of some kind. But how would I feel if all it was was my daughter coming up to me and saying, daddy, what did you get me?

And then receiving that gift and running off and not even giving me a hug or sitting on my lap. But really, the times that he treasures as a parent are those times where his child would come up to him and say, daddy, I'm glad you're home. I'm just happy to be with you. I might give her a gift after that, but we're going to spend some time together, and that gift is going to be the overflow of my love for her and the connection that we have. So many times, we just want the gift from God rather than his presence.

But when we seek the giver of those gifts for no other reason than just to be with him, that's what God's plan for us has been all along. Sure, we messed that up in the garden of Eden as humanity. Sure, sin put a barrier there. But when we confess sin, it's not because God's angry and he's going to hold it over our heads, but rather confess the sin so that we can get it out of the way. Because Jesus identified not only with us when he died on the cross, but he actually took our sins as if it were his own, so that we can have his life as if it is our own.

It's as if God took our resume and everything about us and placed it on Jesus on the cross so that now, in his resurrected, exalted in heaven state, we can take his life and resume and take it as our own. The sinlessness of Christ, the access to the Father. Folks, I know there's some groups within Christianity that believe we need to go through a mediator. Maybe Jesus mother may be one of the saints, something like that. But I'll tell you, folks, Jesus said that we have a direct line of communication.

Amen. We don't have to go through anyone else. We have a direct line to the Father because of the Son. And the spirit of God is the ministering presence of Christ in our midst. Folks, if we miss out on that, we've missed out on everything God had for us.

You might get close to the glory because of some around you who are that close to God. You might sense the presence of God with those others, like Moses having the shining face. You'll say that man was with God, but you'll miss out on everything God had for you.

I want to spend a couple more minutes in prayer. We're not going to take too long, not even going to talk a long time. We don't even have a piano player here to lead us in a song. But if you have business to do with God today, you have sin that you need to repent of. Today is the day, and now is the time.

If you have something against a brother or sister, whether they're in this building or across the country, you know what? You've got business to do today.

If you just need more of the presence of God in your lives, don't miss that opportunity. Amen.

Let's have a moment of prayer.

Come to the altar and pray. Come up front and pray. Don't leave here today without it.

God, we thank you today.

Oh, God, we need you so much.

Maybe sometimes we don't realize just how much we do need you. God, maybe at times we've bought into the lie that we're okay. That lie gets preached loud and often in all the voices around us, everywhere we go, somebody's trying to convince you that your sin is okay, that it's only natural, that it's only just part of who you are, that you don't have to be worried about that. You don't have to beat yourself up over. You don't have to be concerned with that.

That's just who you are.

Lord, we read your word, and we allow it to read us. We allow your holy spirit to bring your word alive, sharper than a double edged sword, sharper than a surgeon's scalpel, to pierce through those areas in our lives. And, God, we know that in those places, in those areas, that your word doesn't leave us hollow or void. Those things that you prune out of us, the sin, the cancerous sin of sin that you take out of our lives. God, it isn't just at that point.

There's a gap there. God, you fill us with your presence of your holy spirit. So, Holy Spirit, today I continue to invite you in. For each person that's looking for more of your presence in their lives, for each person that knows that they have a need for more of you, I just ask of you that your spirit would be in their lives in such a tangible way that those around them would know that they've been with God. Like the Israelites seen the radiant face of Moses.

May those around us know and sense and see that we've been with Christ, that we've been ministered to and filled by the Holy Spirit of God. And that our lives are given to us by our Father in heaven, who loves us and wants nothing more than to be with us. God, as we look in the past at the sin of humanity, as we look at our lives and in our world today, we confess our sin and the sin of the people around us, like Isaiah did. And then, God, we look forward to that glorious future where Jesus, you said your dwelling would be with us.

God, as we look at that whole overarching story, from the beginning of humanity to the conclusion of our time on this earth and the eventuality of being with you, we look forward to that. God, we ask that as we sweep through from day to day, that we wouldn't forget. Spend our time with you. Seeking ever a closer fellowship with you, O Lord, draw us close to you. Give us lives of intimacy with the spirit of God.

We pray. May people as they spend time around us say, take note. They were with Christ Jesus name. We pray.