Andrew Meher: you All right, we are going to jump into our text for today. If you have a Bible or a Bible app on your phone or you wanna Google this, can you go to John chapter one, we're gonna read verses one through 18 in just a little while. ⁓ If you're new here, welcome. My name is Andrew, if we've met, have not met. ⁓ We started a series a couple weeks ago that's going from now through the rest of May, and it is about the basics of what we believe as Christians. If we follow Jesus, and this is all Christians around the world throughout the last 2,000 years, have all believed these basic things. And we've been looking at what we believe as Christians through the lens of something called the Apostles Creed. If you want to learn like the whole detailed history of it, you can go back and listen to the podcast from a couple weeks ago, listen to previous sermons two weeks ago when we started the series. We just took a week to kind of lay out what it is. So if you want some more background, you can find that there. But the Apostles Creed is essentially a baptism confessional that's used by people who are being baptized or prepared to be baptized. And there's three parts to the Apostles Creed, like we just said, God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit, God the Holy Spirit. And this goes all the way back to Jesus' original words in Matthew 28 where he said, and make disciples and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So the declaration of the Apostles Creed is sort of a culmination. and a formulation to help those that are being baptized and those who have been baptized remember this is what we believe. And we said this about the creed, that the creed helps us in three ways. It's instructional, it helps teach us, educate us, maybe remind us if we forgot, what do I believe? ⁓ yeah, right. It's also formational. I used an illustration recently with someone about how this works. It helps us see what is real about the world as we come to believe in God. And what I used as an illustration was my brother-in-law is a painter. He's really incredible painter. was in a gallery in the city recently looking at some of his work. And I would just look at this carpet that looks like a photograph, right? But it's just painted. And there's little wrinkles he painted in the carpet. And I would just say, wow, that's a maroon carpet. And he's like, well, actually, and he starts kind of pointing out all the different shades and the textures. And as he's giving language to different things, I'm able to see what he's talking about. Often, when we come to faith, we need to be given the language to see the reality of God. Does that make sense? And so the creed kind of functions as a way to see the painting for what it really is. So it forms us, it shapes us, it gives us eyes to see things in new ways. And then finally, we said that the creed is declarational. that when we declare this, we're declaring to ourselves, to our brothers and sisters seated around us, to our neighbors, we're declaring the good news of who God is in the world and what we hope for as Christians. And sometimes, we just need a little reminder of some good news, yes? I don't know, maybe you guys have just lived in a different world than me. I need good news reminders often. often. So that's what we talked about. then so we introduced the series and then last week we talked about the first part of the Creed about God the Father. We believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. And we talked about the goodness of who God is, the fact that God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit has revealed who God is to us. But through, and the love that God has within this, we call it, this is a theological language, this triune community that God has within himself, a father, son, and spirit. There's just so much love and perfect community, and God's just so generous, it just spills out and just God starts creating and makes these creatures in this universe and this cosmos and all these things, and God said it was good. And God made these things good and, So we remember last week that God the Father, what that means is that there is an intentional God who purposely brought you and brought this whole thing into being. And that's good news for us because we know that you and I are not accidents. There's meaning and there's purpose in life. And so we're gonna continue considering who God is through this text of John 1 verses 1 through 18 as we talk about God the Son. is Jesus. So let's read this together. John chapter 1 verses 1 through 18 says this, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing has been made that has been made. Nothing was made that has been made. And in him was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. There came a man who was sent from God. His name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband's will but born of God. The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only who came from the Father full of grace and truth. John testifies concerning Him. He cries out saying, This was he of whom I said, who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. From the fullness of his grace, we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God, the one and only. who is at the Father's side has made him known. Let's pray. Holy Spirit, we just invite you to come and continue to be present as you have been here and we open ourselves up to you this morning. We ask that you would give us your eyes, Spirit, to see who Jesus is. We ask that you would give us hearts to receive and minds to understand what you were doing and who Jesus is to us. and we ask God that you would be just present upon this time and that your word would remain and that my words would fall away. In Jesus' name we pray, amen, amen. I really love seeing art and paintings and they're about, almost 15 years ago, my wife and I were on our honeymoon in Ireland. and we got to see this incredible painting in the National Gallery in Dublin called The Taking of the Christ. Do you have that painting up there? And this is a really lame version of it on a screen. In reality, it's actually bigger than that TV. It's huge, it covers a whole wall. And it's absolutely breathtaking. Caravaggio is a Renaissance master who, he painted in such a way it felt like you were hitting pause on like a Netflix show or something. And there was like, you know, there's like movement. And you just see people like kinda like in mid-move and they're in the Garden of Gethsemane in this painting and they're taking and arresting Jesus. It's just this powerful piece. But what's actually so crazy about this painting is it was lost for centuries. It was only recently discovered I think in the mid-90s or so. ⁓ And it was actually hanging forever in a monastery in Dublin. in the area of Dublin. They just had this hanging on the dining hall for the monks in this monastery, and no one had a clue that this was one of the great Renaissance masters paintings just hanging there. The masters' handiwork was right there, and they did not even know that they were in the presence of this great work. And then one day, ⁓ they noticed, you know, painting's been here really long time, it's really dusty, it's just not in a great environment, it's cracking a little bit, all those things. And they go, well, you know, we know someone at the National Gallery, maybe they would do us a favor and clean up this, you know, this kind of worthless painting that we have. It's just nice, but you know, maybe they'll do us a favor. And so they actually did them a favor, they took it in, and the restorer who started to go about the process of examining this painting was just like, hold on. a second, and he started, they had some manuscripts and some letters that described this painting, and so they knew that it existed or had existed, and they started this process of examining, and they're like, well, there's some telltale Caravaggio signs that we could look for, and they started, and then they started to bring in other authenticators, come here, take a look at this, and they gave witness to something that was startling. They were standing in the midst of one of these great masterworks. and they were dumbfounded that it just been in plain sight this whole time and no one knew. And so turns out today, the monastery has loaned it, it's on permanent loan to the National Gallery so that people can see it. I remember being there and there was a little girl with her family there, the little British accent, they must have been over from the UK, and she's like, but why are they taking Jesus? It was really funny, we always remember that. ⁓ But it was just this incredible moment for them. They had finally authenticated this. It's the real deal. It's a Caravaggio, and it was all over the news. It was a massive thing, because Caravaggio's paintings had become popular again. And so to find another one was a really, really big deal. I don't know if you've ever experienced that, or you've watched, like, Antique Roadshow, or like, ever see, like, you know, that pawn shop show where they're, like, appraising, is this really authentic? Is this the real thing? How do we know? What can we compare this to so we can judge if this is really one of these works? People ask those questions about art and about antiques all the time, but that's actually a similar question that we often run into when it comes to who God is. Now last week we talked about God being Father, Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, right? And there's this beautiful idea that we can know some things about who God is by looking at creation and all of these different things. ⁓ But the problem is, is can we really know what God is totally like just by looking at the world around us? We might be able to learn some things about who God is, but especially, this is what happened in Jesus' day and in the years leading up to it, the Jewish leaders and religious leaders were pouring over the law. They had the law of God. and the books of Moses and just like John says here, Moses gave us the law and so they'd be pouring over the law. They had God's law and what God told them to do and they still were divided on exactly how God had revealed himself. It was hard because no one has seen God. How do we really know what God's like? And so they would argue different things based on the law. This is how we should understand what God is like. Well now you've got to take into account this. This is how we understand how God is life. And so there are actually disagreements in Jesus' day about how to understand what God was like. And then John tells us himself here, no one has ever seen God. are we going to authenticate this masterpiece, if you will? How are we going to authenticate this if we don't know what to compare it to? How do we know what God is really like? How do we know that the Father is really good? How do we even know that that goodness is meant to exist at all in the world? That's what the second part or the second article of the Apostles Creed tells us about. Because it tells us that God the Son, the second person of what we call the Trinity, God the Son became human. And so God showed us what God is like in human form. And this is a lot of what John's gospel is doing, is it's saying, and this is what he says at the end in verse 18. No one has ever seen God, but God, the one and only, he's talking about Jesus there, God, the one and only who is at the Father's side has made him known. John's saying, listen, we've not been able to totally authenticate who this God is that we worship as Jewish people in this day, and then it's expanding out to to the rest of the world beyond the Jewish people. And he's like, we've not been able to know who God is, but this one who is God has come to us and has showed us who God is. Is that a tongue twister enough for you? Is your brain scrambled yet? Jesus, this is the simplest way to say it, when you see Jesus do something, when you see or read about Jesus saying something in the gospels, that is God speaking. So you can take it that if Jesus says it, that is what God is like. I know fully and completely what God is like because I have seen who Jesus is. We can know who Jesus is exactly and fully because of this second part of the Creed, which reads as we said earlier, we believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, died and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again, he ascended to heaven, he's seated at the right hand of the Father and he will come again to judge the living and the dead. Now notice a couple things about this section of the Apostles Creed. It is by far the longest, right? It's by far the longest because it is in Jesus that we are able to understand who God is. We need as much understanding about who Jesus is because that is the most tangible way we're gonna be able to understand who God is. Pretty concrete, right? Some of us are like, I need to see it in order to believe it. So I need something, some of us are very concrete thinkers. I'm like, well, what do I do? Help me understand so I can understand what this is like. And so Jesus does that and the creed helps us do that because it shapes the longest, biggest section around what we can understand easiest about who God is. God who is human in Jesus. So ⁓ one other thing that ⁓ we need to notice about this is that because God became human, this also is problematic because if God existed as a human to show us how to be human, we have something that we're being held accountable to. I say problematic because if you're anything like me, I'd prefer to do it my own way. And so when I see who Jesus is, and especially if you start going through Jesus' teaching, his most famous teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, and he spends a great deal of time saying things like, sell all of your possessions and give them to the poor. Can we do something else? Jesus. He says, I want you to go to your enemies and love them. And if they force you to carry their stuff one mile, because Roman soldiers would often do that, he's like, you know what? Go with them two miles. Jesus, can we do something else, please? And so when we start thinking about this, we get to see who God is and God starts revealing who God is in Jesus and it starts to kind of, the rubber meets the road for us. If we're gonna follow Jesus, it means we're following what God looks like if God were human. Because God was human in Jesus. And Jesus is showing us how to live this life that we have been called to live as God the Father's creation called human. God created us with an intended purpose and Jesus shows us how to live out that intended purpose as humans. And so we're gonna talk about just very, very briefly, I wanna show you three things about who Jesus is. We don't have time to unpack every single line of this part of the creed individually, but I just wanna very briefly talk to you about who Jesus is, that Jesus is divine, that Jesus is fully God, that Jesus is incarnate, that's a way of saying that Jesus is human. Now I wanna be clear, I didn't say reincarnation, I said incarnation. There are other religious beliefs and traditions that believe that after you die, you get re-embodied in some kind of physical form, human or otherwise. I didn't say that's reincarnation. When we say incarnation, we're talking about God who was never human before becoming human. Does that make sense? Okay, I know there's a lot of little technical things with this one. So we're gonna talk about Jesus as God, Jesus as human, and we're also gonna talk about Jesus as victorious. Jesus did some things and is now doing some things that matter for our lives. Are you with me so far? All right, so let's just briefly talk about the divinity of Jesus, the divinity of Jesus. Jesus as God. John opens up this text, verses one through four saying that that word was with God? the Word was God and that the Word gave life to everything. So think about that, the word, this is another name that gets used for God the Son. The Father, sometimes Jesus is referred to as the Word, the second person of the Trinity or the Son. So John is saying here, the Word was with God, so the Word wasn't created by God, are you with me? The Word is still completely God, was with God, was God, and then he was with God in the beginning, but you can see some, the same but distinct. That's about as far as we're gonna get into Trinitarian theology today, folks. ⁓ But then he says that through the Word, nothing has been made that has been made. Nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. Essentially, what John is saying here is that God created the whole universe through the Word. Well, that kinda actually makes Physical sense too, like logical sense to us if we think about what it says in the opening chapter of the Bible in Genesis, Think about it. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and he says, God spoke, let there be light. And God said. And God said, and what is God doing every time that God creates them? God created, God said, let there be plants. Let there be animals on the land, animals in the sea, animals in the sky. Let there be, let us make humans in our image. God said, God said, God said, over and over in that opening chapter. There's words. God is using words. And so John is taking this literally and saying, God spoke by the word. And this word isn't just God speaking like you and I speak through our vocal cords. This word that God spoke was also God. And so through everything that has ever existed. The Word made it all. So everything we talked about last week, all the goodness of creation, this intended for a beautiful purpose, all these things was done through God, Word. This is the divinity. But then something happened. There was rebellion against the Creator. Adam and Eve, many of you are familiar with the story, even from church or just from culture. They rejected the God who gave life to everything. And they entered into a pattern of dysfunction, of sin, of death, and the slow decay of everything because they're now separated from the very thing that gives them life, which is God. Y'all with me so far? Richard Hayes, the ⁓ New Testament theologian says, refusal to acknowledge God as creator ends in blind distortion of the creation. This is what sin is. Sin is a blind distortion. God created everything and said it was good. There was great intended purposes for everything in the cosmos. And then because we rejected the life-giving God, everything has slowly started to unwind. It gets corrupted. People start inventing new ways to be evil. Exploiting other people. Hoarding their money. Growing and growing. There is lying. There is stealing. There is killing. and it is all happening because we're on, we have this inertia of saying no to God and this momentum where this world is just now crumbling. Everyone feeling really encouraged right about now. You see this in our world, right? Everything just, every generation feels like it's worse than it was when they were kids and that's probably ⁓ just some of that's perspective of growing up and some of theirs, there's probably some truth to that on some level. But things are just like, what's happening? Why is everything crumbling? God the creator though, the word who created all things did not want to leave his creation falling apart. We'll read a quote from St. Athanasius in a second, but one of the early church's fathers said, God would show himself to be very weak if everything started to fall apart and he just went, well, I tried. And he like walked away from it. No, instead we see the second thing I want to mention is we see the incarnation of Jesus. The Word, as John says, became flesh and dwelled among us. The early church father Athanasius said, for we were the purpose of his embodiment, meaning the Word. And for our salvation, he so loved human beings as to come to be and appear in a human I want you to see this the word who created everything saw that everything was falling apart and Decided I will go into the world as one of the created things To save it It is for you that Jesus the Sun Became human It is for you that the word took on flesh It is for everything that is collapsing and unwinding in this world that Jesus became human The incarnation matters incredibly to us for a number of reasons. That Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. By the way, ⁓ naming Mary as a virgin is not to say something negative about sex. ⁓ Saying Mary is a virgin has really nothing to do with Mary, it has everything to do with who Jesus' father is. It's to make very clear we understand this is God. There's no mistaking that. This is God. And God comes into the world through the way you and I come into the world. Have you ever thought about God coming into the world through a birth canal? Is that a weird thought? But it is completely theologically appropriate to say. Because this is who Jesus is. And so Jesus lived life. This is why when it says he suffered under Pontius Pilate, that little phrase refers specifically to his Roman execution, but it also refers to the fact that the word suffered the effects of everyday life in a human body. The word in Jesus got tired. The word in Jesus was thirsty and stopped to ask the woman at the well for a drink. The word was hungry and needed something to eat in Jesus. Jesus experienced everything he did. The word in Jesus was tempted by the enemy. Gee, the book of Hebrews says that Jesus has experienced everything that you and I have experienced, except he did so without sin. So the word was showing us how to be human in the midst of this un- raveling creation. He was conceived, he was born, he suffered, and then he died like humans die. He was buried in the ground like humans are buried. He descended to the dead. He was dead like humans die. We just had someone in our church have to leave early this morning to go be with their family because a family member just died this morning. Jesus knows what that is like because Jesus has died. Jesus has seen his friends die. So we read in the story of Lazarus. And Jesus grieved and wept, it says. Jesus knows the human condition intimately. God knows what it's like to be human because the word became human. And I want you to know that, lastly, we talked about the goodness of creation and all these things, but how many of you know there's suffering in the world, right? God is not far from your suffering because God suffered under Pontius Pilate in Jesus. The word became flesh and experienced suffering. Jesus was a Jew in the area called the territory, the Roman territory of Palestine under Roman occupation. One mile if they ask, or go two miles if they ask you to go one. He was talking about a real thing he probably had to do. He was probably bullied by some Roman soldiers at some point. Hey, punk, take my stuff. You're going with us or we'll kill you. That was his everyday reality. And he was dirt poor. He experienced the lowest of the low, and I want you to know that there is nothing that you have experienced in your life and suffered through and struggled through that God has not been through in Jesus. And that's such good news. I remember my mom praying once when our family was going through a particularly challenging crisis, and she just said, God, sometimes I just need to know that you have skin on. out of the blue two days later, someone that we didn't even know, a friend of a friend of a family member, called up out of the blue and said, hello, I wanna take care of this particular financial need that I heard about was burdening your family. And he said to her, because sometimes we just need to know that God has skin on. Not making this up. I was a teenager when that happened and I was like, I think God's real. That to me was the moment of, think this is real, I think God is really. God has skin on in Jesus. God came into the world and cares about you. And then not only did God die, God suffered on the cross. He was wrongly convicted and suffered a brutal execution. And he did all of that because the word did that for you and for me. Because the word takes responsibility for what the world or for what the word has created. If the word created the universe, the word is going to take care and fix and redeem the universe. And so he dies. That his material body dies, right? Jesus dies, but that leads us to the third point. the victory of the Son. Jesus does not stay dead, does he? This is that we're in the season called Eastertide between Easter and Pentecost right now. It's the season of remembering that Jesus is not dead, that Jesus has risen. And a few things that we see happen here. The darkness could not overcome him. Some translations of John chapter one verse five said, Jesus was full of fullness and grace and he brought us one blessing after another grace and truth came through him and this is what happened on the cross on the cross the apostle paul says jesus died for our sins the entire brokenness and unraveling and unwinding of creation that had been separated from god is redeemed in jesus on the cross all sin that has been committed it goes on jesus on the cross everything that has been done and will be done against God is done and fixed on the cross. The work of the cross is powerful. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, died for your sins and my sins. He died for the unwinding and unraveling of this cosmos that's falling apart and its separation from God. But not only did Jesus do that, it says that Jesus descended to the dead. And there's a long tradition, actually some translations of the Apostles Creed say he descended into hell. And there's a long tradition of Jesus actually going into the realm of the dead. there, ⁓ go to the next page thing, and it's Jesus actually taking Adam and Eve up out of these coffins. and bringing them out of the dead. Jesus is literally going into death and robbing death of all of the dead people and saying no more. And so this is why the scriptures say that the dead in Christ will rise because death has been defeated. This is what one theologian says, there was never a death like this before, and there has never been one since. This was a death where the very giver of life died, and then as death tried to consume the word of God, death couldn't, and death was completely exhausted on trying to destroy the word, and to the point where the word Jesus came back to life. Death has been completely exhausted now and utterly defeated because it tried to destroy the very one who gives life. And it could not do it. And now it says that Jesus is raised to life and he is right now ascended and seated at the right hand of the Father. Jesus is right now Lord and King over the entire universe. Ruling and reigning, and that's not all, it says that one day Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead. Anyone feel uncomfortable with that language? I don't love the idea of someone judging me. We say that a lot, right? Hey, what are you doing? What are you talking about? can't judge me. I have a question though. If you entered a pie making competition, what would you want the judges to do? Why do you give you first prize? You'd want them to judge you. Why? to be the best? Don't you want them to perceive that your work is of good quality? Do you want them to see, yes, this is an excellent pie? You want them to, if you did a good job on your pie, you want them to see that, right? Now you probably don't want them to judge that pie if you didn't do a very good job with it. But here's the challenge, because of what Jesus did on the cross, the scriptures say that we are not judged by who we are, we are judged by who Jesus is. And so when Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead, all who are found in Jesus... are judged by Jesus' standard, not by ours. And also because Jesus is the only one who is a good and righteous judge, thank God, Jesus is going to judge based on a better standard than you and I could come up with. Because our standard of judgment always, like, prefers ourselves. We always default to kind of like what I think is best. Jesus is the only one who is a truly unbiased righteous judge. Every one of us has a bias. So it is only Jesus who can rightly judge. And when Jesus returns, what Jesus is also going to judge is he's going to right every wrong that has ever been done. Are you frustrated about some of the injustice and corruption you see in the world right now? Jesus is the righteous judge. Are you frustrated about the things that have been done wrongly against you when you were innocent? Maybe in your workplace or in family relationships? Jesus is the righteous judge. Have you or your family been treated wrongly over something, a misunderstanding or otherwise, and it's affected your life? Jesus is the righteous judge. That's pretty good news. It means that Jesus will right every wrong, and as long as we place our life in him, that his new life will be our new life. that his defeat over sin and death becomes our defeat over sin and death because we're no longer held to the unwinding and unraveling of a broken world. So there's the divinity of the Son, Jesus is fully God. There's the incarnation of the Son, Jesus is fully human and the victory of the Son. Jesus has completely and utterly defeated death, defeated sin, defeated all of the problems of this old and unraveling world, of this old creation and is made available to us new life. And when Jesus returns, Jesus will make all things new. How many of you feel like that's like a myth or like fairy tale land? Be honest, it kinda does, right? Sounds like some. You believe, it's like reading something in the Chronicles of Narnia or something. JR Tolkien, was a friend of C.S. Lewis and he wrote The Lord of the Rings, he actually said Christianity is the true myth. It is the thing that everyone's trying to, yeah, they create these mythologies and these things and he says this is the true one. This is that thing that we're longing to be real. That thing that we hope for, that God really does care and God has really found a way to overcome all of the wrong and the sin and the injustice and the death in this world. And friends, Jesus has done that. The word became flesh and dwelled among us. The darkness didn't understand it, but the light shines in the darkness. The one that we didn't know, God the Father, has been made known through the Son. Now why does this matter to you and I in Highlands Community Church in 2026? I'm being completely honest with you. ⁓ Pastors are told to make sure that your text is really relevant to the lives of your congregation. Make sure like it really like resonates with them. And I'm sure there's some things in what I've said today that resonate with you, but I've really struggled with how do I make this quote unquote relevant to our lives today. But here's what I want to say, I think who Jesus is, this one who came into this fallen and broken creation and has given away into new life, here's what I think is really relevant and what matters about the life of Jesus. I think Jesus matters to us because it doesn't matter at all to our lives. Why do I say that? Because your life and my life outside of Jesus are part of this old creation that's just unwinding and unraveling. And sometimes we think about following Jesus or coming to church or Christianity as, Jesus, come help me with what I'm doing in my life. I need help piecing these things together. I think like that sometimes. Do you think like that? Help me make sense of my life. And what Jesus is actually saying and what the scriptures call us to do is actually die to our old life. This is what baptism is. We are buried, our old life, and we are raised into an entirely new life in Jesus Christ. So part of what Jesus is saying is not, we're not called to say, Jesus, come help me fix my life. How does what you offer matter to my life? Saying, kinda doesn't. Come and receive my life. Step out of your life and come into the new life that I am offering because there's nothing, we have no grid for this in our broken and unraveling. But some level requires us to lay down the relevance of our own lives. This is a completely subverting flipping the script on everything. This is why we say we believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord. If Jesus is Lord, it means that there is nothing else in any of this created order that we can stick or connect our lives to or stake our lives in. There's nothing that we can stick our lives in because it is all crumbling and falling away. This is what the scriptures say, the old has gone and the new has come. And so this sounds super irrelevant to us. It sounds threatening to us. Do you feel threatened? I feel a little bit nervous and insecure. even saying this. But the reality is Jesus does not want to fix your old life. Jesus wants to give you a new life. And it is a new life that is full of the life of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in communion with the brothers and sisters of God, all who receive his life. And we need to join ourselves to the life of Jesus because this old life is falling away and dying. This is why John puts at the very center of the text we read, yet to all who receive him. To those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children. You and I are invited to receive this new life of Jesus. This new life that comes out of the old unwinding and unraveling and brokenness of sin. This new life where we trust that we are secure and that our sins are forgiven because Jesus died for our sins. This new life that means that the grave and death have been completely and utterly robbed and defeated and death. is not even something that we need to fear. And then that we know that we will, as we'll talk about in a few weeks, rise again because we have a new life in Jesus. And Jesus, the righteous judge, is gonna come and right every wrong, everything that you've been like, this should not have happened to me, this is frustrating, everything. Jesus wants to bring you into that new life because he is the righteous judge. And when he returns, he wants the old to pass away and he will make all things new. And he's inviting you into that new life. So church, will you receive the new life of Jesus today? Will you let Jesus be your Lord? Will you receive the new life? Step out of the old. We actually can't function as the church if we try and stay anchored in our old life at the same time as trying to live the new. It can't happen. Would you stand with me? The challenge. The challenge of Jesus is that we are face to face with what God has really called us to. But the beauty of Jesus is that we are now face to face with how radically God loves us because God did not abandon his creation and his creatures. God entered this world to suffer with us. God entered this world to be alongside us and God through doing that is calling us into a new life that he has made a way for. And that new life is for you. That new life is for me. That new life is for your neighbor. That new life is for your coworker, yes, even the one that you don't get along with. And that is why Jesus is calling us into a complete... Let's pray.