Everything in this church is operates out of relationship.
That's because we have a theology that the self giving
love within the Trinity is the place that everything else
emerges out of. So that's why when we have a
meeting, we'll have a BBQ. It's why we have breakfast in
the morning, it's why we'll have a church lunch.
It's why we host people spontaneously and sporadically
because we believe that life, the ministry flows out of
relationship because that's how God the Godhead operates.
He within the Godhead is self giving love and out of that self
giving love God creates. So it's there's thought behind
it. It's intentional rather than
unintentional. So I'm really excited today.
We've got Paul. He's been going through the
Gospel of John, and we're about John 4, John 5, so you can
follow the last two. You can find that particular
series in on our podcasts. So I'm just going to pray for
Paul now. And then there's going to be a
response time at the end with Sam and Olivia hosting worship.
So at midday, we're going to have a response time to what we
feel God's doing because we really want people to kind of go
away having a sense of encountering God and
experiencing him. Thank you so much for Paul and
thank you for his journey and all that is embodied in him.
And we receive what you have through him today, particularly
we we always continually pray this prayer that the eyes of our
hearts might be enlightened, that we might know you better.
We have may have revelation of you and experience you.
Amen. Thank you Alice everyone.
I was looking for a talk I did some time ago but I couldn't
find it. It's one of the Hope podcasts
where I did John 4. So I was thinking, should I do
John 4 or John 5 today because I wanted to do John 5.
Then I realised I actually did John 4 previously.
It is there somewhere. So if you want John 4, then you
can go dig back through. It's one, it's one of them in
the last couple of years I did, I did it.
I will refer to a couple of things from John four and but I
really wanted to zone in on John 5.
Before I do that though, I've got, I've got a couple of
announcements slash promos. So one is next month, May the
30th. So Saturday the 30th, we have a
conference here, those of you doing the ITTF course with
Baxter Kruger. So Doctor Baxter Kruger is going
to be here with us and also Jason Clark who hosts the
Rethinking God with Tacos podcast and a couple of others.
So we, we've, we've got an event on the Friday which is somewhere
else. And then on the Saturday we're
here and Sunday morning Baxter will be here with us as well.
We've currently had about 130, a 140 booked in for that Saturday.
Very few people from Hope that conference, I'm fairly sure is
going to sell out. Like we've got people flying in
from around the world to come to that one.
And people always leave it to the last minute to book.
If you want to come, I think you should come.
And if you want to come, I really think you should book
like sooner rather than later because those places are going
to go if you don't want to pay for a ticket.
They're only, they're only 2750. But if you don't want to pay for
a ticket, I could also do with some ushers and people who could
volunteer to help. So please come and speak to me
about that would be great. But I think it's going to be
it's going to be a really fantastic time actually having
those guys with us. And on a Sunday morning, you
know, we we have Alice and I were joking about our hard time
stops. You know, well, on the Saturday
we don't have hard time stops. So we'll get to really go deep,
deep dive and have sort of extended times and whatnot.
So please come the information for that is in the hope
newsletter. But if you don't know where that
is or aren't on the mailing list, then you can get it from
my website as well, which is championsofhope.co.uk.
And if you still didn't note that down, forget it.
Come up and speak to me and I can send you the link.
So that's number one. Number two is my book is out.
A few people have been asking me about it.
We've got, we have a, we have a load of these up there.
I've brought some today. If people actually want to get a
hold of them. Better to get it from me
directly than to buy it from Amazon because Amazon is
terrible. And also even by you can buy it
from my my publisher. But if you buy it online, it
automatically adds postage. And if you hear you don't need
postage, you can just get it straight from me.
So I've got a bunch of them. So the book, the book's called
Damascus Encounter the Unexpected crisis.
It's not about the apostle Paul. It is kind of half about me.
It's a I'll just read you. I'll read you what?
Paul Young, who wrote The Shag. He's a good friend of mine.
I'll just read you the endorsement that he wrote.
If it weren't for the grace of failure, you would have become a
horribly dangerous man, leaving a multitude of dead bodies in
your wake. Don't get me wrong, I still
think you're a dangerous man. Only now in the best of ways.
So I don't know. I don't know if that sells it to
you or not, but I've got, I've got a bunch of them here.
We'll, there's an audio book version, which you do have to
get online. There's an ebook apparently as
well. I think you do have to get that
from Amazon. And there's a video course as
well and a study guide if you're interested in those.
But in any case, the book's the main event.
I've got a bunch of them. They're 15 lbs.
So come and see me. I can do cash or or bank card if
you want to, if you want to do that.
Anyway, Grace and I, we were just in Italy.
We were, we took the girls, but we want to, it was a kind of
bustman's holiday, you know, preaching and beach at the same
time, which is nice. But also when, when we were
there, there was with the Waiwan base in Italy, the, the DTS
course and that was just a phenomenal time as well.
Something really exciting is going on with that group.
Again, people sort of flew in from all over for a week
conference on the back of this DTS that that Waiwan were doing
there and I visited. I feel like Holy Spirit's
speaking to me or trying to get my attention about Saint Thomas.
And the reason I say that is because a couple of years back I
was, I was on a trip in India and to Chennai.
And the first day we were there, the the hosts took us to the
Cathedral of Saint Thomas like a or it was like a monastery area
up on a mountain. So Saint Thomas, if you know the
history tradition, record, Saint Thomas went to India, that was
his evangelistic mission. And there's the Temastic Church
which began around his Apostolic ministry in India.
And it sort of formed the basis for the Church of the East in
India. Probably monks went from there
to China a few 100 years later. And you know, it was part of the
whole ecosystem for the first 5-6 hundred years or so.
What was going on in Asia was happening with, with India and
Iran, what the then Persia. These were sort of major centres
of the Gospel. And so I was out there and we,
we went and visited Saint Thomas anyway, down in Italy, we just
took a day trip to the, the next town down.
And I didn't know we were also at the equivalent Saint Thomas's
Basilica, the, the cathedral there in Italy, where history
records that Thomas's body was brought back after he was
martyred to Italy. And it's, you know, the
Catholics like to have their reliquaries, right?
So they kind of store the the relics of the Saints, which is
is nice and gothic. But anyway, you can go down to
the the relic query where they've got, you know, Thomas's
body in the in the in the casket there.
And it's a beautiful church, you know, really just beautiful,
fantastic, loads of cool stuff in it.
But I felt like, OK, 22 for two, right?
You know, these suddenly, I'm not intending to go on sort of
pilgrimages to learn anything about Saint Thomas, but I felt
really definitely Holy Spirit saying something about Saint
Thomas. So I don't know if you've
anyone's got any insight on that.
Come and come and tell me. Maybe you've you've got an angle
on Thomas and you've done a lot of reading or research about
him. That would be great.
This is Thomas who's doubting Thomas, where they usually call
him doubting Thomas. He's the one who says I'll only
believe it if I see it right. If if Jesus turns up physically
resurrected from the dead, if I can get a hold of him myself,
then I'll believe. I'm not going to believe it just
because anybody told me. So he gets his reputation as
doubting Thomas. But of course, he was the the
founder of the Indian Church, you know, major Apostolic
figure. And I think there's something,
there's something in that maybe we'll explore as time goes on.
But anyway, Italy was fantastic. Thank you for those who who were
praying for while we were out there.
And yeah, there's, there's cool stuff going on.
I think around the world, people are waking up to the gospel.
They're getting clear on the gospel.
And it's like my friend Baxter puts it, the gospel is like
Windex. You know, if you've got a, if
you're looking out through a pane of glass and it's all
dirty, then the gospel clears that off, clears the vision.
So the so that you can see clearly that's what John's
gospel is about. And I'm going to dive into a
couple of points here again, for those of you who've been
following this study. I really tried to resist doing
the kind of the classic systematic line by line or
chapter by chapter through John, Partly because if we did that,
we would be here for years trying to do it.
Also because I'm here like once every six weeks or two months or
so doing it really would be years and years.
And the other reason is I think we have this tendency to
approach the Bible. Our starting point is we want to
read it very close. It's like we want to zoom in
really close. What does this word mean?
What does that word mean? And we want to kind of get right
into the, the, the sort of the, the atoms and the molecules of
the Scripture. And I raise this point because
this is relevant to some key things that Jesus says in John
chapter 5. So this is a general point, but
it's also a specific point. I think that when we, when we
zoom in really close, that's, that's fine, but it's only half
the story, or maybe it's even less than half the story
actually, because the the Bible is not really written to us in
this from that, that basis of you're supposed to read it very
close. You're actually supposed to read
it very far right from you're supposed to see the big picture.
It gives us the big picture. And then from the big picture,
we then start to understand the little picture, those individual
parts. This is one of the, if I could
say I am ambivalent at times with a lot of contemporary Bible
scholarship because it's almost universally accepted that the
way you do Bible scholarship is you do close reading.
You have to zone in what does this word say?
What does that word say? And then you put it into the
historical method, which is, well, how does how does this
relate to what happened in history at the time?
What did it mean to them? And all of that is fine.
I'm not, I'm not against it, but it's like the only thing that
goes on a lot of the time in Bible scholarship.
And frankly, it's kind of lifeless.
It's like a friend of mine said, it's all very well and good with
the parable of the lost coin. Having this understanding that
the lost coin was probably a wedding coin and that the woman
was wanting to go for a wedding and she needed the coin for the
wedding and it was part of the headdress and all these other
sorts of things, all the historical part about it.
But it's like, So what? Who cares?
Honestly, Who cares? Who cares really if the pool of
Siloam was on the West side or the east side of this thing?
Like what? What on earth difference does
that make to anything? Right?
The Bible was not written for a historical education.
It was written to blow you up. Blow the flipping doors off,
right. It's Sunday morning on a podcast
in a family church. So I can't do the, the proper
quote supposed to blow the doors off.
It's not supposed to sit there. So we think, Oh yeah, nice.
I, I come out feeling slightly more educated about this book.
I go out slightly clearer about what Jesus might have meant when
he said this versus that, or slightly clearer about what the
Jews were thinking at that at that time.
And I just think like, like who honestly, who cares?
The gospel John says at the end of the gospel, I've written
these things so that you may believe and in believing you may
have life not I've written these things so that you may be a
little bit more historically educated about what was going on
in New Testament times so that you can publish another book to
keep your faculty happy and justify your job right.
Again, all nice, all good to have that that side of things.
But if it is not, if it's not bring like my my book is called
subtitled encounter because I just think if it's not about
encounter, then what what we're doing here.
If it's not about encountering Christ in US in each other in
life, if it's not about that, what's the point?
Baxter again quoting him, you know, he said if the if the
fullness of life that Jesus promised is basically this, I'm
all right, thanks. I'm out.
You know, it's just not really good enough.
If that's really what the fullness of life means.
If it's just that we've got a nice kind of it's nice community
time, connection time, all this is good, fantastic.
And we, you know, we kind of learn a few things about the
Bible and we do this and we do that and you know, just
basically muddle through. If that's the fullness of life
that Jesus promised. I think I've been mis sold.
So I want encounter with reality.
That's the only reason I'm a Christian.
I'm not a Christian because somebody gave me a good
apologetic or they've got nice arguments about why you should
believe in God versus not. I think probably the
intellectual arguments against believing in God are
intellectually probably better than the others, frankly.
But it's not about an intellectual argument.
There's there's something more fundamental and clearer and more
powerful and more true, which is not the intellectual side.
The intellect is going to going to constantly leave you falling
short. This is about encounter, it's
about life, it's about reality. So having taken most of my time
in trying say come and book in on December the 30th and you'll
get unfiltered, unmediated, unscripted and unconstrained by
time, more or less. If that sounds good, then come.
If it doesn't, then maybe you don't want to come.
I don't know. You can buy the book instead.
So having said that, what? So over the over the last few
sessions I've done, I've tried to establish the point of John's
Gospel, begins John One in the beginning.
God in the beginning was the Word and the Word was face to
face with God. So John is reminding us of
Genesis One in the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth. So Genesis 1 tells us what God
did. He created.
John One tells us how God did it, what was going on behind the
curtain. Genesis 1 is in front of the
curtain. John 1 is behind the curtain.
Behind the curtain, the Father and the Son are face to face in
relationship, eternal oneness in the Holy Spirit from eternity
past to eternity future. That's what Alice was talking
about. Other focus, the other focused
self giving love. That is the reality of the
Trinity. That is where everything came
from. John's showing us that in John
1. Then everything else that comes
in John's gospel is governed by that first section.
He's like, I'm setting out the the big picture here.
And you need to keep that in mind as you go through the
gospel because it's going to come up again and again.
The same themes are coming up again in John 5.
We have the same themes coming up in John 4.
It's about the water of life, right?
So if you want to go and track back to that, that podcast I
did, the summary is Jesus said, you drink the water I give you
from within, you will rise up a spring of living water.
And then in John 7, it says, and then the one who believes that
spring will become a river. It will go forth from you.
That's the that's the basis of the Kingdom of heaven is in you.
And as you connect and engage with that experientially, it
comes up within you. And then that educates you in
terms of belief. And it's like, OK, now I can
step out and do something with that.
The water flows forth from you. Like that's the summary of that
part. Then we're in John 5 and
actually at the end of John 4 is where we had the, the turning of
water into wine. And that's important because I
forget this, which theologian said that Jesus started his
ministry by turning water into wine.
And the church for the most part has spent 2000 years trying to
turn it back into water again. That's what I mean about this
kind of the educating the mind, right?
You can read the Bible, you get educated about things and it's
like it's water in the sense of it's got no punch to it, right.
But why is the symbol of wine used?
And particularly when we know that alcohol, wine is quite a
destructive thing in so many people's lives, that why is that
being used here? Well, the, the point is that
the, the image there, it's a, is that when you receive the wine
of the spirit, it actually takes you out of yourself, right?
It knocks you out of it into an altered state of consciousness
that is no longer controlled by the world system, but you've
been knocked into the consciousness of the Kingdom of
heaven. Paul talks it.
He uses the word ecstasis. He says I am in ecstasy is where
we get the word ecstasy from. Ecstasy means literally to stand
outside of yourself. The wine of the spirit takes you
into a kind of out of body experience it.
It's pulling you out of the pattern in the system of the
world, which is like a dreamland shadow land that CS Lewis calls
it. And it's it's drawing you into
the life and the experience that is the wonder in the father, son
and spirit. It's it's an ecstatic
connectivity with the reality of that life.
Thomas Merton said. If the Father were to remove his
love for you at the count of three, you would disappear into
nothing at that very moment That you are sustained moment by
moment by the love that is between the Father, Son and
Spirit. That is what the whole of the
creation is upheld by. That is the light of life that
gives light to everyone. John One says that the Father,
Son and Spirit have a pre-existing relationship with
the entire cosmos as creator and sustainer, and the force of that
sustenance is the 4th force of other focused self giving love.
I went into a debate with an old friend of mine on social media a
few weeks back where he said well I just don't accept that
the Bible says that love is the essence of God.
And I said well you're absolutely wrong.
The Bible is emphatic that love is the essence of God.
In fact, it's John the Apostle is the one who says that God is
love, not God is loving, God is love, and therefore because God
is love, we see his attributes, holiness, justice, all of these
things are are extensions of his love.
They're not antitheses to his love.
They're not opposite to his love.
Working in tension, this ridiculous word, they're not
working in tension. God has no tension within
himself. God is fully integrated, God is
love, everything he does is an extension of that.
And that's what we're created and sustained and held by.
Or to encourage you to read John's gospel with that in mind
and read it quickly. When we read it slowly and we've
got days in between 1 chapter to another, we miss the repeated
themes. You know, it's like if you're
listening to a piece of well crafted classical music, there
are themes and those themes continue to repeat and they
continue to vary and there's a constant revisiting of those
themes, right? That's how you got to read John.
You have to have an intuition, a sense of what those themes are,
and then you realise what the point is as they're coming up
over and over again. So this issue of revisiting
Genesis 1 is one of those themes.
John is taking you behind the curtain.
That happens here in John 52. You get in John 516.
So Jesus is doing healing and miracles.
And they say because Jesus was doing these things on the
Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.
So in the synoptic gospels, the thing that gets Jesus crucified
is he challenges the Sadducees over their relationship to
money. In John's Gospel, the thing that
gets him crucified. This is a theme that from this
point continues on into John. The thing that really upset them
was that he was breaking the Sabbath.
And the implication of him breaking the Sabbath was that he
was equating himself with God. That's the issue in in John.
It's a different level that John is taking us to.
So this issue of the Sabbath is really important.
Why was it so important to the Jews?
Well, in the Jewish history, the Sabbath breaking was given as
the reason why they went into exile.
Why did the why did the Jewish nation go into Babylon?
According to the story, it's because they did not keep the
Sabbath. Interesting.
This question of Sabbath keeping comes up again over and over in
the New Testament. Hebrews also touches on it.
It's super important, but look at what Jesus says verse 17 in
his defence, Jesus said to them, my Father is always at his work
to this very day and I too am working for this reason.
They tried to kill him. Not only was he breaking the
Sabbath, but he was calling God his own Father, making himself
equal with God. I don't know if you how weird
this is. So much of John's gospel is
weird. When I say about water into wine
and the church trying to turn wine back into water, if we try
and make John's gospel less weird, we're turning the wine
back into water. It is weird.
If anybody tells you this stuff is clear and makes sense, they
haven't understood it. It's not clear and it doesn't
make sense. It's not supposed to.
It's supposed to shock you out of the the, the natural mind
which seeks to control. It's an environment by
understanding everything. If I get a yes and if I've got
an answer to know all 360 degree understanding of my environment,
I can control it, I can master it, I can be safe.
The gospel will not allow you to do that because it's blasting
you out of the natural minds tendency and need to control.
My good friend Paul Young often says the why question is almost
always about control. Why did that happen?
God, why are you like this? God?
Why is it this way about control?
I'd feel unsafe with uncertainty.
I need certainty in order to get a handle and a control on my
environment, because then I will be competent and safe.
The gospel is not going to allow you to do that.
So I don't want to make this try.
I don't want to turn this back into water.
It's supposed to be something that begins to work on you, and
we need to talk to Jesus about it.
It should form the basis of our prayer, basis of our communion
with one another and our life encounter.
We need to encounter the real Jesus, not a fake Jesus, not a
facsimile Jesus, not an outline of Jesus.
We need the real deal. I need the real deal.
Anyway, why does he say this stuff about the Sabbath?
Well, it's interesting. My father is always working.
Well, back to Genesis 1. Genesis 1 says the Father is not
always working. You remember it says on the 6th
day he created man, and then on the 7th day God rested.
So what's going on here? Well, go, you can talk to Jesus
about it. What's going on here?
Jesus? Genesis once says the Father
stopped working, but you say the Father's always working.
You see how the you see how the Pharisees and the Jews might
have had a problem with Jesus? 19 Jesus said very truly, I tell
you, the Son can do nothing by himself.
He can only do what he sees the Father doing.
Whatever the Father does, the Son does also.
For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.
Why is he telling us this? Again, back to John 1 The in the
beginning was the Son face to face with the Father.
The whole point of this gospel is trying to reveal to us, Jesus
is showing us what is the life that he has with the Father from
all eternity past, because that's the life he's come to
bring to us. That's the life he's brought
into human flesh. It is.
He's transplanted it into the inside of us, Right?
The Father loves the Son, but then he says the Son can only do
what he sees the Father doing. Now, anyone who's still in this
penal substitution thing about Will, the Father is separated
from the Son on the cross. Nonsense.
Can't be the Son can only do what he sees the Father doing.
The Father and the Son cannot be doing two different things on
the cross because the Son can only do what he sees the Father
doing. Simple Trinitarian orthodoxy one
O 1 right here. The Father is in the Son, and
the Son only does what he sees the Father doing.
Let's skip down. Just as the Father raises the
dead and gives them life, Even so the Son gives life to whom he
is pleased to give it. Who are you pleased to give life
to? Jesus.
That's a good question. You should probably ask Jesus.
Who is it you are pleased to give life to?
Moreover, the Father judges no one but is entrusted all
judgement to the Son. If you think that the judgement
question is simple, the Father judges no one.
How like, how often have you had this image that God the Father
is like the judge on the throne and Jesus is kind of the defence
attorney between him and the Father.
Formal heresy, by the way, that's formal heresy.
The Father is not the judge on the throne.
He says he's entrusted all judgement to the Son, and it
says below, just as the Father has life in himself, so he is
granted the Son also to have life in himself.
And he's given authority to judge because he's the Son of
man. The fact that Jesus has the
authority to judge is because he's a human being.
Talk to him about that. What does that mean?
Jesus? If I test about testify about
myself, my testimony is true, but there is another who
testifies in my favour and I know that his testimony is true.
He's talking about John the Baptist.
He says John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you
chose for time to enjoy him. I have testimony weightier than
that of John for the works that the Father has given me to
finish. These very works I am doing
testify that the Father sent me. John came from God.
The the John the Baptist came from God.
He was sent from God to do something.
But Jesus is also from God, but in a different way.
He says my testimony is greater than the testimony of John
because it is grounded in the eternal reality of the life I
have with the Father. John was sent out from the
presence of God, but he's still a creation, just like you and
me. Christ is not a creation.
That's why the Creed says he's the only begotten Son of the
Father. It's begotten, not created.
We see that here in in the Gospel.
He's telling us what I've come to bring you.
Is not that the word of a messenger who's been tasked to
give a message? What I've come to do is bring
you the very life and reality of God.
I have come from the other side of the veil to your side.
When the veil is torn in 2, the crucifixion, it says it's torn
from top to bottom, not from bottom to top.
Makes a point of saying top to bottom.
Why? Because it's showing us this is,
this is about the, the, the, the mystery that was hidden behind
that veil has come out. It's not so that we can go in,
It's so that it can come out. This is also John 4, the water
of life coming up and out. Because in John and in most of
the New Testament, the physical body is the temple and the the
corporate body is the temple from which God proceeds.
Anyway, I'm down to my last couple of minutes, so let me,
let me land it. He says the Father sent me and
he has testified about me. You have never heard his voice
or seen his form elsewhere. Jesus is going to say everyone
who came before me is a thief and a liar.
Do you believe Jesus when he says that?
Who came before me? Abraham, Moses, Elijah,
Jeremiah. And Jesus is willing to call
them thieves and liars, not expecting that Jesus don't try
and turn it into water. Drink it as wine.
See what it does. Right here's my my clincher for
you and why I was just talking about water into wine.
Verse 39. You study the scriptures
diligently because you think that in them you have eternal
life. These are the very scriptures
that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have
life. How much of modern church,
contemporary Bible scholarship ministry does exactly the same
thing that Jesus is critiquing right here in this chapter?
You study the Scriptures because you think in the Scriptures you
have life. No, you don't.
The scriptures testify about me and in me you have life.
That's different. It's not Father, Son and Holy
Bible. The Bible is holy, but it's holy
because it draws out within us and connects us with the
testimony of who Jesus is. And it's in him that we have
life, so we don't want to stop at the door, AW Tosa said.
The Bible is a book full of doorways and what most
Christianity does is stand there admiring the doorway and
discussing the doorway and what colour is the doorway and what
material is it made out of. And you know, is it, should it
be this doorway or that doorway? And he said the purpose of a
doorway is that you go through the doorway into an experience.
Tosa said we need to stop teaching and start testifying.
And he was talking about the Bible, said we need we need
people who can speak out of their experience of having
walked through the doorways of the Scripture, not those who are
teaching an an academic, intellectual or theological
idea. As correct as it might be, it
will not bring life. We're supposed to walk through
into life. Lastly, verse 45, having said
I'm the judge, he then says, don't think that I will accuse
you before the Father. All right, How does this work
out? So you've told me that you're
the judge, you have the power to judge everyone.
And then you said I won't accuse you before the Father.
He says your accuser is Moses, in whom your hopes are set.
If you believed Moses, you'd believe me.
But since you don't believe what he wrote, how are you going to
believe what I say? Isn't Moses the one who said
that God rested on the 7th day? Traditionally, if you're not
confused by this yet, you haven't understand the
implications. He is like slapping them around
with the salmon, you know, like kind of salmon fish and they're,
they're dizzy. It's like knocking them
sideways. Well, what, what, what else do
you think? It's like if you're going from a
A2 dimensional view of the world to a three-dimensional one,
that's going to feel a little bit disorienting.
If the Christian gospel is not disorienting, it's probably not.
You're probably not connecting with it, right?
We're probably not connecting with it.
It's extremely disorienting. We go from 2 dimensions to 3
dimensions. How dizzy does that make you
feel? This whole business continues
throughout. John about Moses says this.
Moses says this, but I say this and it it's connected with the
concept of law. It's connected with the concept
of Sabbath all the way through. He's trying to break us out of
this mentality that is locked in to this old dysfunctional
pattern and way of thinking so that we can actually experience
the life of God. He's constantly spinning us
around so that we that centrifugal force of being spun
around causes us to shed the false armour of Saul that
liberates and breaks us out into our true identity.
It's not something that's imposed from the top.
It's something that spins from the from within and it bursts
and breaks everything open. That's the image from the inside
to the out. That's the message of John.
That's what Jesus is doing here. I'm going to pray.
The guys are going to do some leading.
I think that's what Alice said. Jesus, thank you that you are
the new wine. Thank you that your words are
spirit and life. Thank you that we have all this
wonderful scholarship that educates the mind.
But, and if you can agree with me on this one, then you, you
agree with the Holy Spirit. But today we want to agree with
you and dethrone the natural mind as the leading part of our
life and give permission to our hearts and to the Holy Spirit to
meet us, encounter us and transform us from the inside
out. Thank you, Holy Spirit, you've
come to do that. We don't have to do it, but you
do. We give you permission and then.
Yeah, so Paul was saying that God is love, and he's really
kind to each one of us. Olivia had a picture at the
beginning of Jesus knowing exactly what each one of us
needs. He knows how to take care of us.
So as we're going to worship now, we can come to Jesus and
ask him to give us what we need, the revelation we need, the
insight into him being loved that we need, the fact that he
doesn't accuse us before the Father, the fact that the
Father's handed judgement over any anything that that Paul was
bringing just now. Ask Jesus to give us what we
need. And part of surrendering control
is trusting everything else to God.
He's interested in meeting our needs, giving us today Our Daily
Bread and, and he can take, He's got the shoulders to carry
anything else and everything else.
So I'm going to invite the Holy Spirit now to reveal to us how
Jesus is meeting our specific need.
Come Holy Spirit, we we know you're in us.
We know you're always with us, but we also know that you love
us to welcome you and say we partner with you.
And so I ask that we we get revelation of the specific needs
we have Jesus that you want to meet as we worship now.
And I pray if we need to reach out to someone and pray with
them and ask for help or or give help to someone else, that we do
that as well. Because you, you break the
broken bread is a community formation.
This isn't an individualistic walk.
It's a community walk. You give us as a community our
needs. So I bless us to have our needs
met. The need that you want to meet
today, may you meet it in our response now.
Amen.