To Luke chapter 8 verse 19. So we're Family Day weekend.
Does anybody know how many official Family Day weekends we
have had here in the province of Ontario where Family Day has
been a statutory holiday? Any guesses?
It is a statutory holiday and I know if you're a federal worker
it's not. I get that it is 18.
This is the 18th official Family Day.
The first Family Day was February 18th of 2008.
So this will mark 18 years. Which is for those of you who
are keeping track, approximately the same amount of time that we
have taken to get through the 1st 8 chapters of Luke or so.
Because God is way better at scheduling than I am, we
actually find ourselves in a text this morning that deals
with family. I'm telling you, I could have
never scheduled this today. And and we're going to find
Jesus talking about this topic of family in the way that really
only Jesus can. Like one of the things that I
love so much about Jesus teaching, actually just about
the word of God in general, is that it has this dual capability
of both deeply encouraging us and, and, and strengthening our
hearts and at the same time really challenging us and
pushing in on some spots in our hearts.
We live in this polarized world where it's always black or
white. It's one thing or another.
And, and I love the fact that Jesus in in the very nature of
who he is. He doesn't allow us to live in
in polarizations. He forces us to live in
tensions. We like polarization because
polarization is comfortable. We don't like tension, but Jesus
is constantly pushing us into things, into places that don't
fit neatly in anybody else's boxes.
And so as we unpack Jesus's teaching today in in this area
of family, I am betting there will be moments where you just
feel like yelling out Amen at some of that.
That's OK, by the way. I know that it's a Baptist
Church, But, and if you didn't know it's a Baptist Church, we
are, we are baptistic in our beliefs.
That's OK. But you can be a little
Pentecostal here too. So if you feel like shouting an
Amen, go nuts. But there's also going to be a
whole bunch of times and maybe you want to keep this a little
bit more quiet where you're like, she says, I don't think
you got this one right, right. Because this is what happens.
We, we, we're confronted by Jesus.
And, and here's the thing though, if Jesus is Lord, that
means that we surrender everything over to him like
we've been saying about that. So we don't just go with him on
the areas where we we agree with what he's saying or we want to
believe what he's saying. We go along with him in the
areas where, oh, that's hard, that's difficult, that's
uncomfortable. And Jesus is going to say some
things in the area of family that I guarantee you aren't,
because it was really uncomfortable in the society
that he lived in to say some of the things that he was saying.
In a culture that was built on bloodlines and ancestry and
honor, and in in a world that often times idolizes the nuclear
family. He's going to say some things
that are just as challenging to us.
Because ultimately the teaching that Jesus is going to give us
today about family isn't just about family.
It is at its core about this truth that for a Christian,
loyalty to God Trump's all other loyalties.
For a Christian loyalty to God Trump's all other loyalties.
That's what's at the heart of Jesus teaching today.
It's a teaching that to say that you are a Christian is to say
that you identify with Christ before anyone or anything else,
that your allegiance to Jesus supersedes every other
allegiance to every other group or or individual or thing, even
those people that you call your family.
And so let's read these verses together.
Luke chapter 8, verses 19 to 21. Then his.
That's Jesus. Then his mother and brothers
came to him, but they couldn't meet with him because of the
crowd. And he was told your mother and
your brothers are standing outside wanting to see you.
But he replied to them. My mother and my brothers are
those who hear and do the word of God.
Now here's a here's a little truth for us that all of us
should understand as we open up an unpacked Scripture that if
you are going to learn to apply God's word in the here and now,
the first thing that you have to do is understand what it meant
in the there and then because God's Word then is what
determines what God's Word now means.
So we got to dive in and we got to see what is happening here in
this text. So let me just take us back.
If you go back to verse 4 in chapter 8, we know that Jesus is
teaching, right? He's got a large crowd that is
gathered around to hear his teaching.
And within this reality, his family shows up, His mom, Mary.
And you may or may not know this, but Jesus had half
brothers and sisters. After the birth of Jesus, Mary
and Joseph had children. We they had at least six
children that we know of. We've got four brothers who are
named in the Scriptures, so James, Joseph, Simon and Jude.
And then we're told that he had at least two sisters who are
unnamed in the Scriptures. In fact, two of those brothers,
James and Jude, they become very significant leaders in the early
church. They're the ones who wrote the
Epistle of Jude and the Epistle of James.
Now I always like to take a moment.
We talk about Jesus having half brothers and especially half
brothers who are significant leaders in the church.
And I always like to ask this question, what would it take for
you to believe that your sibling was the son of Son of God?
And I always say at the bare minimum, it's dying and arising
again, right? And that's the bare minimum for
any sibling to believe that their sibling is actually the
the the son of God and God become flesh who bore the sins
of the world upon them. Just think about that.
James and Jude had something happened that was so significant
that caused them to believe that Jesus really was who he claimed
to be. Just just just think about that.
If you're skeptical about who Jesus is, you're probably not
more skeptical than his siblings ever were.
But the resurrection is the turning point for them coming to
believe in Jesus. So, so here are his, his mother,
his siblings, his brothers for sure.
And they say, hey, hey, hey, we got to get through.
We got to speak to Jesus. Now in Mark chapter 320 and 21,
we're going to put it up on the screen because Mark gives a
little bit more detail about this situation.
And Mark says Jesus entered a house and the crowd gathered
again so that they were not even able to eat.
And when his family heard this, they set out to restrain him
because they said he's out of his mind.
Now there's debate about what exactly it means that his
brothers and, and certainly for Mary, what did, what did they
mean by thinking that he was out of his mind?
Was it just like they were really concerned for his
physical well-being? Because we see here in in that
text and Mark that he's so busy with ministry.
He's so wrapped up in in in doing the will of the Father
that he doesn't even have time to eat.
Could be that there was concern that the things that he was
teaching, we're making some powerful people really angry.
We've already started to see this, right?
Like there there's religious leaders who are really starting
to get angry at Jesus. And we know this is ultimately
going to lead to his death on the cross.
And it could have been that they had just deep concern for the
reality that he was ticking off the wrong people.
And it may have meant that they thought that some of the things
that he was teaching were just bonkers, just crazy.
In fact, to go back John 75, the apostle John tells us in his
gospel that not even his brothers believed in him.
Again, before the resurrection, Jesus brothers are really
skeptical about Jesus and his claims.
But someone we know comes and tells Jesus your mother and your
brothers are standing outside and they're wanting to see you.
And in this culture, there is an expected response that may be
different from what you would expect depending on the culture
that you've grown up in or the family of origin that you grew
up in. But if someone comes to Jesus in
this culture in this time and says, hey, your mother and your
brothers are standing outside wanting to see you, the expected
cultural response is, hey, everybody, it's just going to
take a pause here. I need to go out and see my mom
and my brothers. My family's here.
What he says is incredibly countercultural.
And again, This is why I want to impact this because for some of
us in a Western Canadian context is like, yeah, tell them I'll
get to them when I'm done in my meeting.
Tell them I'll get to them when work is over.
But that's not what would happen here.
So this is an incredibly countercultural thing to say.
My mother and my brothers are those who hear and do the word
of God in. In Jewish culture, family was of
utmost importance. Family is the place where your
economic security was tied up in, right.
There was no, there was no social systems and social safety
net. Your family is your social
safety net. It's your social standing.
Your standing in the community is directly related to the honor
or dishonor that your family is held in.
It was the source of your religious identity.
I'm Jewish because I was born into a Jewish family.
It's, it's all your whole identity is rooted and wrapped
up in, in this familial tribal reality and still really true
in, in so many cultures. Some of you know this, you're,
you've come out of cultures where family is incredibly
important, not just like immediate nuclear family, but
your, your extended family, your cultural tribal background and,
and history in, in Lebanon. When I visit Lebanon, you are
Shia or Sunni or Christian because you are born Shia or
Sunni or Christian and your your standing in society is so
wrapped up in the standing of your parents and their
grandparents. Talk to many people.
We have, we have a number of people, number of you here today
who come from a Portuguese background.
Talk to a lot of Portuguese people here in Cambridge who
will tell me they're Catholic and I'll say, OK, why are you
Catholic? Because I'm Portuguese, right?
You can not be both of those those things.
They just, they are together. Listen, this is a family above
all things culture, and to prioritize anything above family
was unthinkable. But that's exactly what Jesus is
doing here. Many of you will have heard the
saying blood is thicker than water.
That means that the ties that you are born into are deeper and
more binding and more important than any of the other
relationships or friendships you choose.
Jesus is saying there is a belonging that is deeper than
blood. They come and they say your
family's here to see you. And Jesus says, let me tell you
who my family is. My family are those who hear and
do the word of God. Now I'll pause here because
there's a danger that if we take just what Jesus says here out of
the context of all other Scripture, we're going to end up
in a spot that sounds a lot like this.
Belonging comes through obedience.
The teaching of Scripture is not that belonging comes through
obedience, but that belonging comes through the blood of
Jesus. It's the blood of Jesus that is
thicker than the blood of family.
John 112 to 13. And put that up on the screen
for you. John is setting the stage.
This is the very beginning as he's unpacking Jesus's coming in
the incarnation. And he says this about those who
receive Jesus. He says to all those who did
receive him, he gave them the right to be the children of God
to those who believe in His name, who were born not of
natural descent, right, not a biological family or the will of
the flesh or the will of man, but of God.
That there is a familial reality that happens through the person
of Jesus Christ that is deeper than even the biological
realities of family. And it comes about because the
2nd Corinthians 521 says God made him who did not know sin to
be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.
It is the blood of Jesus that drives us into a belonging that
is deeper than the blood of family.
I want to say this, you need to understand this.
There is only one answer at the end of the day to why should God
allow you into heaven. The answer has nothing to do
with who your parents were or your grandparents were and it
has nothing to do with the things that you do to build your
own identity and accomplishments.
The only correct answer to to the question that God, one day
we will all have to stand before God and give an answer to why
should I let you into heaven is because of Jesus, because Jesus
Christ lived for me and died for me.
That's it. It's the only correct answer.
It's the only answer that qualifies or counts for
anything. And if you have not come to the
point where you would say I am assured of my salvation, I'm
assured of the fact that I will spend eternity with God forever
in the new heavens and new earth because and only because Jesus
has died on the cross for me. The invitation is there for you
today to receive Jesus as Savior.
And that's what it means is to accept that and to say it's not
about what I do. I don't save myself.
My good works don't save me. Jesus work on the cross saves
me. But Scripture says again and
again, the evidence that you have truly believed that Jesus
did the saving work for you on the cross, the evidence that you
truly have been brought into the family and belong through the
blood of Jesus, that you believe that Christ lived for you and
has died for you, is that you begin living for Christ and
dying to yourself. So obedience to God is the
evidence that you belong to Jesus family, that you have been
purchased by Jesus. Listen again to the words Jesus
says. My mother and my brothers are
those who hear and do the word of God, who hear and do the word
of God. This goes back to the teaching
that Jesus gave last week. Remember, this is all Jesus is
doing, all of this. We're breaking it up.
This teaching is all happening kind of in together at the same
time. And Jesus has says the good
soil, the soil that truly has received the word of God, and
where that word has taken root is one that endures and bears
fruit. If there is no fruit of
obedience, there is no certainty that you have understood the
gospel in your life. James one again, James the
brother of Jesus who's well acquainted, He's the guy who's
trying to get in and see Jesus right now.
James 122. James says be doers of the word
and not hearers only. We had a friend who came over
for supper this week, hadn't seen for for quite a while.
And so, you know, if you've got kids at home, when somebody
comes over and they haven't been around for a while, they're
always stunned, right? I mean, we, if you're, you're
living life and your kids just kind of grow up day by day, you
don't see it as much. But when somebody hasn't seen
your kids for a number of years, they're like, I can't believe
how big they've gotten. And the first thing that she
said when she saw my boys is, wow, you look just like your
dad, but with way more hair. She she would have known that
those were my kids. Even if she bumped out in into
them on the street when I wasn't around.
How would she have known? Because they bear resemblance to
their father. I've met people through the
years who would say they were Christians because, well, they
went to church a lot, They've done a lot of Bible studies.
They knew they heard a lot of things about God.
But what this tells us is that information without
transformation does not equal family resemblance.
Information without transformation does not equal
family resemblance. You have to be not just a
hearer, but a doer of the word. If you've truly been saved, if
you truly belong to Jesus, if you've truly understood what
Jesus has done for you, it will reflect in the way that you live
your life. Not because you have to try
hard, because the Holy Spirit comes in and takes up residence
in you and begins doing the work of making you look more like
your Father. You know, to become a citizen of
Canada, you have to take a citizen test, right?
Some of you have taken the citizenship test.
You probably could answer a lot more questions about Canada than
most of us who have lived here. I can tell you that.
But you have to learn a lot about Canada to be able to pass
your citizenship test in the Kingdom.
The citizenship test is not a Bible knowledge test.
It is a hearing and doing test. It is a transformation test.
It is Are you reflecting the Father in your life?
Are you doing what you've heard? Now?
You can't grow if you don't know.
That's why it's important to be in the Word of God.
But if you aren't growing, then it's only knowing.
It is not evidence that you are part of the family of God.
The first step, by the way, of obedience is what we're going to
be doing next week here in the service, baptism.
Baptism is a step of obedience. It's a step of saying yes to
jumping into the waters and publicly declaring before
everybody that you believe that Jesus has paid the penalty for
your sins and you've chosen to follow him, that you're a part,
therefore, of his family. In some ways, I guess this is
true then that baptism is actually a declaration that
water is thicker than blood, right?
We step into the water and we claim that Jesus blood matters
more than anything else. And the by his blood I become
part of this thing called the church, part of this family of
God. And like I said, we've got a
baptism service next Saturday. If you have not been baptized as
a believer, because baptism is for believers, you can't declare
something to be true about you. That hasn't happened yet.
It is a declaration that you have now made a decision to
follow Jesus. And so if you've made a decision
to follow Jesus and haven't been baptized by immersion, we would
love to have you be a part of that.
If you want to learn more, you can sign up.
We've got a video that Pastor Kirk has done that explains
baptism. And if you got questions out of
that, we would love to talk to you.
But that's the first step in a whole lifetime journey of
growing to be more like our Father, of reflecting the Father
through obedience. So there's a belonging that's
deeper than blood. And the evidence of that
belonging is in our obedience. The last thing we can take from
this is this. If you belong to Jesus's family,
your loyalty to him has to come first.
Again, in Jesus time, family loyalty was expected to be your
first loyalty. When Jesus says what he says,
he's saying actually obedience to God outranks blood.
When he says that, he's not just reordering family, he's
reordering all of our allegiances.
I know in in in this culture, family is still a primary
identity and a place of belonging for so many people.
We do have an idolization of the nuclear family.
We can easily fall into that. This weekend can be a really
hard weekend for people who don't have that experience of
family because we got Valentine's Day and Family Day
and you just feel like you're on the outsides.
And I want, I want to say this, belonging to Christ does mean
honoring our family. I don't want you to hear that
like you just need to discard your family and be done with it.
In fact, quite the opposite. God created the family was his
idea. He put Adam and Eve together in
a garden naked. That's what happens.
He is the one who calls us in the 10 commandments to honor and
respect our parents. In First Timothy, 58 Timothy,
Paul says to Timothy, if anyone does not provide for his own
family, especially for his own household, he's denied the faith
and is worse than an unbeliever. It seems pretty clear to me that
the Bible holds family is an important value and that we
should honor, respect, and care for our family as far as we are
able to. But if it comes down to being
faithful to God or faithful to your family, God wins.
If your family is in a spot where they, because they see you
get hurt or wounded by somebody, are pushing on you to retaliate
and get revenge against the person who has wounded you.
Meanwhile Jesus says, hey, I want you to forgive and if
possible, I want you to reconcile.
You choose Jesus, not your family.
If your family wants you to prioritize young people, a job
where you earn a lot of money and gain a lot of status, but
Jesus is calling you to sacrifice and simplicity, you
choose Jesus. If you're a team, maybe you're
the only follower of Jesus in your household and you know that
Jesus is calling you to sexual purity and your family makes fun
of you. Stick with Jesus Allegiance to
Jesus Trump's allegiance to family.
Allegiance to Jesus Trump's allegiance to the family.
We choose, right? That's what a lot of people
today we call our friends. Some people will say, this is
the family I choose. When your friends are pressuring
you to participate in things that run counter to the way of
Jesus, you choose Jesus. Allegiance, allegiance to Jesus.
Trump's the tribalism that so divides cultures.
It it Trump's our ethnic backgrounds.
It Trump's our cultural backgrounds, it Trump's racial
realities, it Trump's our no pun intended tribal politics.
See, I said trump there. Just want to put that together
for you. In 46 years on earth, I have
never, ever, ever ever ever seen a political party that was
primarily shaped by Kingdom values.
None. 0. If your politics are more shaped
by your algorithm then they are shaped by the Sermon on the
Mount, you've got a problem. If you love people more deeply
because they agree with your politics rather than because you
share the same Savior, you've got a problem.
Now remember what I said about the words of Jesus.
They challenge and they encourage.
There's amens and there's oh no's.
I want to, I want to drive this home.
OK. There's a couple questions I
think that we need to reflect on that I think are going to be
simultaneously challenging but also also hopefully encouraging
as we wrestle with them. As we close.
The first question that comes out of this passage that I think
we need to wrestle with this. Who or what is your deepest
loyalty to? Is your primary allegiance to
Jesus above all things, even when it costs other things?
Even when it creates distance in certain relationships?
Is your relationship with Jesus more important?
Is your obedience to His Word shaping your choices, your
speech, your relationships? Be honest.
Is that really what is most shaping you in your life?
Is a loyalty to Jesus Christ above all things.
When Scripture conflicts with your preferences, your plans,
your wishes, your desires, what wins?
The words of Jesus are the wants of your heart.
When the approval of anyone else comes at the expense of obeying
God, who wins that battle? You'd rather please your spouse,
make your kids happy, make your parents happy, make your
siblings happy? Or is making Jesus happy of
utmost importance? Some loyalty to Christ reshapes
everything and it's not a one and done deal.
It is a constant learning and relearning of these things.
Obedience to Christ is not at the end of the day just a
checklist of rules that you go down.
It is the posture of a heart that says, Jesus, I am fully
submitted and surrendered to you in every area, in all things.
When I call you Lord, you rule and reign in everything, not in
most things, not in some things, but in everything.
If you call yourself a follower of Jesus, let your life look
like you're following Jesus. That's what family resemblance
means. That's what it looks like.
The second is this, does your life reflect that you belong to
a spiritual family? See if if belonging to Jesus
makes us a family, we need to act like it.
We should be the type of family that other families wish they
were. As a church, we should be the
type of family that sometimes our families that we come
through biologically struggle to be.
So let me just let me just paint a picture of what type of family
that would be. Is a family that that loves
across generations and life stages.
I yes, we need ministries to speak to different family stages
and, and, and, and stages of life, but we need individuals
who will work hard to step outside of those silos.
Seniors, we got young adults and young families who need you to,
to mentor them. I just know that there's a lot
of individuals who are dying for somebody who would just just
regularly pray for them and be a sounding board for them who've
seen more life than them. We need to be a church that
cares for one another when we're struggling.
Sometimes that means you're going to have to be honest that
you're struggling because we're not going to know.
We don't read minds. If you don't share that you're
struggling with somebody, how can anybody care for you?
It's it's one of the most frustrating things at times is
to hear that somebody is angry because they were struggling,
but they never told anybody they were struggling.
So how would anybody ever know to help you at the same time?
Do you come into church in the morning on a Sunday morning and
just think, well, I'm here for me, Lord, what do you have for
me today? Instead of saying, Lord, how
would you use me in the life of somebody else today?
How could I speak a word of encouragement or blessing or
welcome or invitation to somebody today?
It's a family that sacrifices for one another and absorbs
inconveniences and offenses. Solomon said that it is a glory
to overlook an offense. We could use a lot more glory in
our culture. We're just willing, OK, yeah.
Some listen. Family means we're going to do
things that annoy one another. Sometimes this is be honest,
we're going to rub against each other.
And so sometimes if if you're able to just be able to overlook
the offense, that's great, but you actually have to be able to
overlook it. Overlook it doesn't mean it
really bothered me. So I went and told somebody else
instead of them. That's called gossip.
Jesus has a lot to say and the Bible has a lot to say about
that. It all ends up like this.
Don't do it. If you've got a problem that you
can't overlook, then you go talk to the person that you have a
problem with and have the bravery to have difficult
conversations and then allow not bitterness to come up, but
reconciliation to take place through forgiveness.
Because it's a family that forgives quickly and forgives
much. That's what the family of God
looks like. It's a family that stays
connected even when it's inconvenient.
It's the family where everyone has value and everyone has a
role to play because everybody matters.
Some of us come from families that, to put it mildly, have not
been ideal. Listen, we won't get it perfect.
No. No family gets it perfect,
biological or spiritual. This should be a place where
nobody ever feels like they've been abandoned, forgotten about
alone. If Ford is truly a family, then
we don't treat each other like customers and consumers.
We treat each other like kin. We don't just show up on Sunday
mornings, but we'll make the effort to show up in one
another's lives. We won't just attend programs,
but we'll attend to the needs and hearts and struggles of the
people who are part of this family.
And it's a big church, so you're going to have to make the
decision to get involved in smaller ways because it's not
going to just going to happen. If you show up here on Sunday,
you're not going to have all of what you need.
This is like a family reunion, right?
We're all here. And you know, we need some
smaller places to be able to, to fit in.
And so I want to encourage you if you're not serving anywhere
to find a place to use your gifts to build up the family and
the body of Christ. If you're not in a group, to to
plug into a group and be in to connect with people who can help
encourage you and challenge you on your journey.
If Jesus makes us a family, then if you belong to Jesus, you've
always got a place to belong to, no matter what happens out in
the rest of the world. That's why this is a good news
on on Family Day weekend. Even a Family Day weekend
doesn't feel very good news to you.
There's a place for you here. There's a place for you to be a
part of a family that isn't formed by DNA and birth, but by
surrender, family shaped by obedience, a family shaped by
grace, and a family that spans the whole earth.
It is an amazing, amazing reality that I know some of you
in this room have had the privilege of and I've had the
privilege of experiencing so many times to walk into spaces
and places on the other side of the globe that are so many ways
so different from everything that is regular in my everyday
life. And yet immediately have the
sense that I'm at home because I'm with God's people.
Even we don't speak the same language, we don't eat the same
foods, we don't sing the same songs.
And yet there's just a sense of, wow, I'm with brothers and
sisters. How cool is that?
See, the question at the end of the day isn't who are your
relatives? The question is who is your Lord
and if Jesus is your Lord, then hear and do the word of God and
know that you are his family. Want to end this morning by
taking communion together? We take communion.
We're declaring some things. If you don't have one of these
cups, we've got some people. I just some of our hospitality
team just invite you to come forward to the front so you can
see the hands that go up if you don't have a cup.
Just put your hands up and our our team will make their way
back and they'll hand some out to you.
If you're a follower of Jesus, you're part of the family of
God. You've accepted Jesus Christ as
your savior. Then I want you to join in with
this because this is something we do together.
We declare some things together. We declare, first of all, we
declare that we belong to Jesus and take the the bread and the
cup. We declare that Jesus has
redeemed us. That word redeemed means that he
has bought us. He has purchased us by his
blood. He brings us into communion with
the Godhead, with the Trinity. We belong to Jesus.
The second thing is that we belong together.
This, this is something that is meant to be done in community
with one another. It is not just a me and Jesus
thing. When we take communion, there's
a truth of that in there, but it is a reminder that we gather
together to say it's not just me and Jesus, it's all of us in
Jesus. We're not isolated individuals.
We're the family of God, united around the table of grace,
united around this. There's one thing that outweighs
all other things, that we are sinners who have been taken from
death to life by the goodness and grace of Jesus Christ, who
died on the cross for our sins. It's a confession that's true
for all of us. Nobody is here by their own
merit. Nobody stands in front of God on
their own 2 feet. We all stand only in the person
of Jesus. We remember Jesus obedience for
us, that he and he alone heard the Father's word and fully
obeyed it. We want to live into that.
We want to emulate that. We want to mirror Jesus to the
extent that we continue to grow in that.
But it is a reminder that Jesus did what we couldn't do.
He obeyed even to death on the cross for us.
And when we take this, we're recommitting ourselves to to
walking in Jesus footsteps, to walking in obedience.
Yes, communion is remembrance of what Jesus has done, but it is
also a renewal of our allegiance and loyalty to him in a way of
saying Jesus, you are Lord and I, I choose obedience.
I choose to walk under your Lordship because I belong to
you. Then lastly, we take this, we
look forward, Paul says, we take it until he comes again.
This meal, this, this, this, this bread, this cup.
It points us forward to a great feast that will be the feast of
His Kingdom, where every follower of Jesus, everyone who
is brought into the family of God across all times, across all
nations, is going to gather together for this incredible
family dinner and banquet. It's going to be a party like
you've never seen. And when we take this, it's a
reminder of what's coming. What's coming is so good, and
we're going to enjoy it together.
So as we take the bread, as we take the cup, today, we do
something more than commemorating what took place
2000 years ago. We declare who we are and whose
we are today. So I'm going to invite you to
take the wafer together collectively with all of your
brothers and sisters through Jesus Christ.
Let me pray over it, and then we're going to take it together
as family. Father, thank you so much that
you have done what is unbelievable and impossible.
You've taken this ragtag group of people who are here, churches
who are crossed our region, churches who are crossed our
country, churches who are crossed the world and the church
across all centuries and cultures.
And through Jesus you've made US1 through his body, which was
broken for us. We are one.
We thank you. Let's take and eat together, and
we'll take the cup which represents the new covenant in
Christ's blood, poured out for the forgiveness of our sins.
If we're going to be the family that we have been called to be,
then we need to learn how to forgive.
And to learn how to forgive, you first have to know that you've
been forgiven. Now let's pray that Christ's
forgiveness would be known by us so we could extend it to others.
Father, when we take this cup, we confess that your blood
poured over and and washed clean all of our sins, past, present,
future. And because we are forgiven, we
can forgive. Lord, we know that if we're
going to be the type of family that you want us to be, we need
to be able to forgive. I thank you that as we take this
cup, we're declaring we have received all the forgiveness we
will ever need. So we are able to forgive.
If there's anything that we need to confess to you today to make
right with you, I pray that we would do that in this moment.
We would take it to you. We would nail that sin to the
cross again and be reminded that Jesus paid for it.
And if there are sins that are outstanding against us, where we
have been wounded and hurt, I pray that as we take this cup
and drink, you would fill us by the power of your Spirit with
the power to release and to forgive, so we'd be freed from
the prison of bitterness and unforgiveness.
Let's take and drink together. We're going to close by singing
a song about our unity together in Christ as a church.