Not a Dead Hope with Pastor Ryan Braley

Amen, let's pray, god this morning.

I give you thanks once again for your presence here.

We just recognize that you are here in our midst and we ask that you give us open hearts and open eyes and open ears and open minds to hear you and receive what you have to say.

And, god, we do pray for new life in all the ways that we have many parts of us have died and pray for new, soft hearts and all the ways our hearts have grown hardened.

Give us new vision in all the ways we've gone blind, and, god, in all the ways that we have grown deaf.

Would you help open our ears this morning.

Pray that we'd be encouraged this morning by your spirit and by your love and by the love of our neighbor and for our neighbor, and pray we'd blossom our time together in Jesus name, amen, amen, you can be seated.

Good morning everyone.

It's great to be with you.

We are actually at the beginning of a brand new series, and so it's our sermon series on 1st Peter, called Exiles and Hope.

We ended our last series, which was a series on story, context and symbol, which was a simple way to interpret any text, but especially the Bible text.

So here's the deal.

Don't stop using that.

You can use that still today.

You don't need me for that.

You can examine any Bible story by asking what's the story, who's in it, what's going on?

Who are they talking to?

What are the people saying?

What's happening?

And in the context, what's going on in the story?

Where is it happening?

Where is it happening in the Bible in time?

Ask those context questions.

And then, lastly, symbol.

What are the symbols lying just beneath the surface?

Of course there's a literal interpretation also, the other symbolic interpretations going on just beneath the surface.

So you don't have to stop doing that.

In fact, today, during our opening of 1st Peter, there's tons of story context symbol questions and things you can be talking about all morning this morning.

So I invite you to keep on doing story context symbol, even though we're not preaching on it.

Does that make sense?

There's a lot of symbols in this one that you can sort of notice, maybe even from the jump in our title.

So, 1st Peter, but wait, luther loved 1st Peter.

Here's what Luther wrote about 1st Peter.

He says this oh, thank you, sir.

I almost forgot the main question, I think.

So, 1st Peter, it's a short book.

I invite all of you to read the book of 1st Peter, and not right now, but later on tonight or maybe tomorrow.

But read it, and as you do, by the way, my sermon title not A Dead Hope but A Living Hope.

Go ahead for me, sarah.

Go to that question again.

There we go.

The question I think Peter proposes to the people who receive this letter is how can you be people of hope living hope, not dead hope, but living hope amongst a culture and people, or maybe a society that's hostile or at least oppositional to the Christian faith?

So all unpack this a bit more.

But how can we then be people of hope, living hope, rooted hope in a culture that many times is going a different direction than you might go or something than Jesus might have gone?

Okay, here's what Luther said.

He loved this book.

Luther wrote the epistle of Peter is one of the grandest and noblest New Testament and this is the true and pure gospel.

We know that Peter or Luther didn't love the book of James, but he loved himself some Peter.

So Peter comes almost at the end of the New Testament.

It's first Peter, second Peter, then his first, second, third John, and there's sort of these few last little like small, short epistles written right before Revelation.

And that's where we are.

It's post Jesus and it's written by, of course, peter, who's one of the twelve Remember, he was one of the twelve with Jesus, he's one of the apostles, and when he's with Jesus, towards the end of the life of Jesus, jesus tells him hey, you're gonna be a foundational member of this new thing that I'm doing, this new messianic community, these Jewish Christians who've been kind of following after me.

You're gonna be when I lead, you're gonna be a part of, like the sort of the leading and guiding of this, what they call the church later on, and you'll be one of the founding sort of principal members of this thing.

And he is.

If you read Acts 1 through 10, peter's very much there.

He's engaged, he's doing ministry, they're sharing the gospel.

It's incredible.

And the church begins to grow and explode.

And then Jesus also tells Peter hey, when it does grow and explode and, by the way, it's persecution that causes the church to explode, it happens all the time, throughout history as well, so maybe we shouldn't be so afraid of that, but anyway, when it does, I'm gonna have you, peter, take the gospel beyond the borders of Israel, and so it won't just be for Israel to sort of move out beyond the border of Israel.

And so it's decades later, after Jesus is gone, that we get this letter from Peter, who's on this mission.

He's taken the gospel out beyond the borders of Israel and Jerusalem and he's out there.

He's actually writing from Rome, but he's taken this out there and we get this letter from Peter and, by the way, it's kind of a different Peter.

Here's a picture of what I think Peter looked like when he wrote this letter.

He's not a young brash, you know, sort of this young man full of bravado, maybe a bit of hubris, any longer.

He's now a different Peter.

He's like an old Wison's Peter.

I mean, check him out.

He's got some great hairs in the beard and in the hair he's got some lines of wisdom or AKA wrinkles.

Thank you for that laugh of encouragement.

I appreciate that he takes naps now.

His favorite weekend plans are when plans get canceled let's just stay home and watch a good movie and have some nice warm milk and also when he has to drop down in the drop-down menu.

He has to scroll all the way to the bottom on those online drop-down menus to find his job, to find his year of birth.

You know what I'm talking about, man.

How long ago was I born?

Just scrolling to the very bottom, that's this Peter.

He's been around the block, he's seen a few things.

He knows a lot better.

Now he's an old Wison's Peter.

The thing is, though, he's still a fisherman, he's like this sort of illiterate he probably couldn't read or write.

So he commissions a guy called Sylvonis to write this epistle for him, and so Sylvonis writes it for him, and Peter tells us at the end of 1 Peter, in chapter 5, he's writing from Rome.

Now he calls it Babylon, but Babylon is a symbol or metaphor for a sort of place that's oppositional to the people of God.

Babylon is mentioned quite a few times, also in the book of Revelation, and it usually is a symbol for anything that opposes the ways of Jesus or the rule and reign of God.

And so Peter uses it because Rome was like the hub, the source politically, geographically and otherwise, of this oppositional force to the ways of God in the world and this new kingdom breaking forth.

So he's writing from Rome, but he calls it Babylon, and he's writing to a bunch of Gentiles or non-Jewish Christians in Asia Minor.

Asia Minor is a modern-day Turkey, if you know where Turkey is.

So look at how far the gospel has spread and the church has grown outside of Israel.

It's sort of blown up now and includes all kinds of people, including outsiders Gentiles.

Gentiles are non-Jewish Christians who want to follow Jesus but aren't intimately connected to the story of Abraham and Sarah.

That's what it means to be Jewish.

You're kind of tied back to that lineage of Abraham and Sarah.

These aren't.

These are just brand new, fresh out of the wrapper Christians who are like I don't want to follow Jesus, let's go.

And they're Gentiles living in Asia Minor, in this part of Turkey.

And here's what Peter writes to them.

And this is the opening of the book.

Watch what you notice.

Check this out.

This is awesome.

He says hey to God's elect.

Your dashboard light should be going off right about now.

Exiles You've heard of that word before Scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus and Galatia and Capodicea and Asia and Bethenia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God, the Father, through the sanctifying work.

That just means like the purifying, or like they're set apart.

They're kind of made holy.

It's sort of that religious language.

They're sort of different, they're distinct and they're holy now Through the work of the spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkle with the blood.

All right, your alarm bells should be going crazy right about now.

This is what he writes to them.

This is the opening line.

What he's doing is he's reminding them who they are.

Hey, look, you're in a foreign place.

Your exiles I'll get to in a minute and there's tension.

Don't forget who you are.

It's easy to forget, am I right?

Many of us forget on a regular basis.

I forgot what I had for breakfast yesterday and it's easy to forget, to not remember.

So he's telling them remember who you are.

And he ties them back into the Jesus story and then, through the Jesus story, into Jesus' story and backstory.

This is how he encourages them.

Hey, remember who you are.

And he calls them exiles.

Remember what exiles are?

We've learned this last week.

If you were here last week.

If not, go back and listen.

There'll be a test next week.

So make sure you study how.

That's a joke.

Exiles are people who live far from home.

They've either been removed from their homeland, kicked out of their homeland, or they're no longer there.

But here's the problem.

These people actually are not.

They didn't emigrate out of their homeland.

They're living in their homeland.

But somehow these people, these Gentiles, and Asia Minor in Turkey are still far from home.

So again, peter's not talking literally.

They're not literal exiles, but they're symbolic exiles.

Are you with me?

These ones living in Turkey, in modern or modern Turkey, in Asia Minor, are in every way far from home.

It's almost like they have dual citizenship, because there are citizens of this country that they live in in these provinces and they claim that that's where they live, that's what they're citizens of, but they're also citizens of another country, a new order, a new world that's bursting forth all around them.

That was brought in Jesus.

That they're coming to.

It's sort of coming to fruition Peter says it's gonna be unveiled later on, but it's sort of coming onto the scene in Jesus.

So it's like they're a part of this country and that's their citizenship, but they're also citizens of heaven, you might say, and the rule and reign of God.

And there's a tension there because sometimes those things overlap, sometimes they're diametrically opposed, are you with me?

And they live in this tension and they're like dual citizens.

They're exiles far from home.

I know what this is like.

By the way, I went to a Vikings game a couple of years ago and I won my Broncos jersey, my John Elway jersey, because you know, of course, and I was there in hostile territory in that game and the Broncos, of course, lost the game.

And it was funny because you're in a hostile environment, I'm like an egg-cell, like a forder in a strange land and boy, the hostility when the Vikings won got ratcheted way up Like the crowd was like malicious, they were like, they were like like vehemently wanting to just get after me and like rub salt in the wound and they were malevolent and every sort of way.

They were just awful and mean.

I mean, you know, the most menaceful, nice way possible, of course.

So you know they didn't like dump beer on my head or they didn't like swear at me or want to fight me.

Remember, I grew up around raider fans, so I know what it's like.

These guys were like five rows back through popcorn at me and as it gently landed on my shoulder, I was like what is going?

Oh, they're being hostile.

So I wanted to honor that.

That was good for them.

That's what they should be.

They should be rabid fans.

I love that.

They should be homers.

So I wanted to honor that.

So I pretended it hurt worse than it did.

Oh, popcorn.

And then I made eye contact and we winked at each other.

It's like the, I acknowledge, you know.

Then we went out and had beers at her honor.

We became good friends.

That's Minnesota for you.

You know what I'm saying.

But these people lived as though they were far from home In every way.

The things they believed in, on many instances, were different than what the culture believed in.

They were believers who were alienated from a society whose values were at odds with the teachings of Jesus, these brand new teachings that they had ingested and had decided to give their lives to.

And they become disconnected from the dominant culture almost in every way.

So their way of life, their aim, their philosophy, their values, the God they worshiped, were not matched by the surrounding cultures and people in the society.

For the most part and I don't just mean that the local coffee joint took Merry Christmas off the cups okay, it was deeper than that, much more heavy than that.

The whole culture was against them.

They were as though they were in a stream flowing rapidly one way and they were trying to go the opposite direction.

So these exiles, these Gentile Christians, were misunderstood.

Oftentimes they were mistreated.

They were living a double life.

They were in the world but not of the world, and they were constantly looking for home and they were longing for home.

See, they were citizens of the country, but also this new world that was to be revealed, that had been sort of brought onto the scene through the work of Jesus.

So here's the question how do you live in that kind of a culture where you're going the opposite direction?

How do you be a citizen of this country and also live according to the ways and the teachings in the life of Jesus?

That might be a question that you and I should ask ourselves today.

They faced intense persecution, hostility, harassment, oppression.

Their lives were at stake.

These were dark times for Christian in that part of the world in the first century.

And Peter writes them to encourage them and he says remember who you are, remember your story, remember the work of Jesus, what he was doing, how he treated people, how he loved people, how he fought all these.

Remember that and his work on the cross, this innocent man dying a violent death.

Don't forget that and remember Jesus' own backstory, because it's easy to forget.

So he calls them the elect.

Why do you call them that?

Well, the Greek word for elect in this case is the word electos.

Remember, if I use a Greek word in the sermon, I sound a lot smarter.

So everyone say electos.

There you go, isn't that right?

That just simply means elect in the English, or chosen.

Now here's the deal.

Some people get off on this tangent like, oh, does God choose some and elect some and not others?

It's sort of this.

I know it's anachronistic, but it's a sort of Calvinist theology.

That's not what he's saying here.

He's not saying the guy what he's doing.

He's using a very specific word that these people would have known.

This is a word that has its roots deep in the Old Testament story of Israel.

It's a Hebrew word.

Now that's the Greek word, but it's this word, this idea, it's a Hebrew idea of being chosen or the elect of God.

What Peter is doing, I think intentionally, is tying these Gentiles into the story of Abraham.

He's using a word for Israel for Gentiles, which is scandalous.

How can he do that?

How can he all of a sudden include Gentiles in this story of Abraham and Sarah?

But he's doing that and writing to them and talking to them as though they belong to the family of Abraham and Sarah.

It's radical, it's scandalous.

In fact, justin Martyr, one of the early church fathers, says that the church is the new Israel, and so this mission of Israel now becomes our mission.

You'll notice we use a lot of the same language.

The blessings of God came to Abraham and Sarah, and then he said hey, don't just hoard them for yourselves, use them to bless others and include the foreigners, the outsiders.

Let's grow this thing.

That's the language we use.

When you get a blessing from God, share it with the world, tell it to your neighbors, love people.

May they know who you are by your love.

By the way, just a quick side note, some people get confused and they think today, in our culture, that America is the new Israel.

It's not true.

Okay, the church?

It's better to say that the church is the new Israel.

America's not the new Israel.

We're another nation.

That's fine, that's great, I love this country, but we're not the new Israel.

It doesn't fit.

It's like chipping a square peg into a round hole.

It's better to say that the church, the people of God who follow after Jesus, that's the new Israel.

Jesus redefines Israel.

He doesn't do away with it, he redefines it around himself.

So, hey look, anyone wants to follow me is now a part of this story, and Peter very intentionally ties these people, these Gentiles, into the story of God and the story of Abraham and Sarah and Israel, so he's reminding them of their story.

This is who you belong to.

This is who you are.

This is who you are.

I know you forget.

I know that times are tough.

There's oppression, there's hostility, there's harassment, there's all kinds of things.

You don't get to go to God's stream.

Don't forget who you are.

So how should a Christian live, how should a follower of Jesus live in a culture or a society that's going the opposite direction?

Remember what family you're part of.

Remember your truest identity, who's you are, and your story goes all the way back to Jesus and to Abraham and Sarah and Israel.

Don't forget that.

And then, by the way, be a signpost for the inbreaking new world, the new order of God.

If the order of God, the rule and the reign of God, looks like Jesus, our lives should be a signpost that points towards that.

This means then you can't be a jerk and mean in the name of Jesus.

Okay, you can't do that.

Some people are like, oh, okay, I'm going to have a war on the culture and push back on that and just be as mean and nasty as the culture is, but in the name of Jesus, no, it's not how it works.

That's what Jesus does either.

You can push back just by being a presence remember who you are and being a signpost to another way, a better way, the way of Jesus, the kingdom of God in this world.

Are you with me?

All right, the four of you that are with me, we'll keep going.

Then let's go.

Does that make sense, though?

That's your job.

Remember who you are, stay rooted in that.

Remind yourself, remind each other, remember who you are.

By the way, this is my job too, as the preacher.

I'm going to remind you over and over again who you are, because we forget.

That's my job, no problem, I love doing it.

And then be a signpost.

Your life I know it's hard to be perfect in every way, but like is to look like Jesus and to have the fruit of the spirit in your life.

That's a signpost.

There's a better way to live.

So then he goes on.

He writes this is what he says.

So Peter then writes by his great mercy, who's great mercy?

Oh, you guys, this is not a trick question who's mercy?

You know the answer yeah.

Thank you, god, jesus, the Holy Spirit.

By his mercy, he's given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

If Jesus doesn't resurrect, it's a dead hope.

He does resurrect, it's a living hope.

So you might have a living hope, or Jesus is our living hope.

Either way, you have now a living hope.

You've been reborn into a living hope.

This is his encouragement.

And also it's into an inheritance that cannot perish or spoil or fade.

It's everlasting.

This living hope, notice this.

It's by his great mercy.

That's how you have it the mercy, the goodness, the lavishness of God.

That's why you didn't earn it.

You didn't buy it.

You might have tried, but you can't.

You didn't steal it, you can't steal it.

It was a gift, a free gift.

This is the mercy of God.

I don't know I was given new life.

I don't know.

I don't want to make it crazy, I get it.

It's weird, just weird for me, I don't know.

That's our only response to this gospel, this good news.

Like I don't know, it's by the mercy of God.

I didn't do anything, I just showed up here and I get given this beautiful gift.

The mercy of God, it's a free gift.

Here's what Luther says.

I love this.

Hey, he's begotten us again, and this too, before we desired or sought it.

Listen, here's some theology for you.

Jesus died on the cross before you sought or desired Jesus, do you hear me?

While you were yet a sinner, jesus died for you.

You had nothing to do with that.

Jesus did it, and it's finished.

I don't know, it's mercy of God.

I don't know what to make of it either.

It's weird, I don't know.

House money, let's go Before.

You thought okay, so that nothing is to be praised, but pure mercy.

The only thing that we can praise is not your good works or how fancy you are, how good looking you are, how smart you are.

Those are fine.

All that can be praised is the mercy of God, in order that we may not make or boast of our works anyway, but confess that all we do is hold the compassion of God.

I don't know, I'm just a compassion holder.

I'm just going to hold as much of it as I can.

Just get it all, man, I'm just going to get it.

It's a free gift.

I wish I had a third hand.

That's all.

Your job is to hold the compassion of God.

It's all by the mercy of God.

This is a gift, and that's new life.

Being born again.

What does that mean?

Well, another Greek word, because if I keep using them all, it sounds smarter.

Here's the word that's a joke, by the way On a genaito, which is Greek word.

That literally means to be born again, or to be reborn, or born anew, born afresh.

Now here's the deal.

Does Peter mean that we should crawl back into our mother's wombs and be born again?

Is he being literal here or is he using symbol?

Your dashboard lights should really be going off now.

What does this mean?

Now, this is a word on a genaito.

It's only used one other time in the whole New Testament.

Do you know where?

I'll just give you the answer Just a few verses later, in 1 Peter, 1, chapter, or verse 23,.

That's it.

It's the only time that this verb is used twice by Peter in 1 Peter.

But Jesus, his life, his teachings and his message were full of this idea, or the notion of being born again or new birth.

For example, in John 3, jesus is out walking around late one night and he comes across this Jewish rabbi named Nicodemus you might know this story and he tells Nicodemus hey, but in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, which is a rabbi thing to say this is what the rabbis would always say hey, here's how you enter the kingdom of heaven, the good life, here's how you have to be born again.

Nicodemus is like yo, do I have to like, crawl back in my mother's womb, and that'd be weird and kind of gross for me anyway.

And Jesus is like no, you don't have to do that.

What I mean is this and he says, hey, you know, you have to be born.

How can that happen if you're growing old?

You have to be look at the bottom be born of water or born of spirit.

Here's Nicodemus' problem.

He knew that Israel was a mess.

Like how can we fix it?

He thought, hey, I'm a rabbi.

If I find another really smart, good rabbi that will help Israel, he's looking to Jesus as a smart, good teacher to help Israel.

But Israel doesn't just need another good rabbi.

They don't need more information and their teaching or what.

Why saying they don't need another TED talk or self-help book or workout regimen or diet routine or some guru?

They don't need that, and neither are you, neither do I.

They needed a complete transformation.

Their hearts had grown hardened.

They needed a new heart, a new life to be born, a new.

And probably again and again and again they needed something new, brand new.

So do we?

Jesus knew that the web of sort of sin had entangled the people and it led to death and destruction.

This self-love, ron Amok, had entangled people, so he offers them new life, brand new life.

Like Jonah vomited onto the shore of Nineveh.

It's brand new, like a child.

It's an invitation to become like a child.

Hey, have a tender heart, see things for the first time in a new way, hear things in a new way, be a bit naive, maybe.

Have innocence like a child, hope for the best like a child, believe in magic and mystery like a child and be born anew.

And, by the way, it's also an invitation to let go of the old, because here's the truth I'm going to remind you of this as well you are not who you were before.

To be reborn or born anew means the old thing is gone.

Whatever that thing was, it's gone.

You're not the you who you were before.

You can start over If you're here today and the you you were was not something you're proud of.

This is good news.

Pay attention.

You can start over.

You can be born again.

You can be renewed, you can have a new transformation and be something new.

And so Peter reminds these people who you are.

You have been born again into a living hope.

This is what he reminds them.

Sometimes, when you go off the path or you miss the mark, it's good to remind yourself hey, I'm the beloved son.

Why am I acting like this?

I've been sort of sanctified by the spirit.

Why am I acting like this?

This is not who I am.

I belong to this family of Abraham and Sarah and all these wonderful fathers and mothers.

Why am I behaving like this when my kids are little?

My kids are here, so I'll be careful until too many secrets, but when they would do bad things, I would want to so badly just yell at them.

What's wrong with you, you idiot?

Figure it out.

What's your problem?

Stop being a dummy.

I didn't do that.

I don't think.

Anyway, man, I did forgive me.

No, when they got older, my wife, I'm like, let's just, let's just maybe more like, hey, look at me, son, look at me, you're my, you're my son, you're my daughter.

This is not how we behave.

Let's do this instead.

You don't have to guilt people or shame them to behave properly, remind them who they are, and that's not how we behave.

You're not behaving like a son.

You're behaving like the old thing, whatever that thing that wants to die or whatever that thing that means to die.

You're behaving like that.

The you before you has to die Old habits, thought patterns, behaviors, things we use as crutches, desires.

And let me tell you, they die hard.

It isn't easy.

When you're born again as a brand new baby, you're not a full, mature 30 year old that can lift weights.

Yet that's too much.

You're still a baby.

So there's a process, right?

This is like.

This is sort of becoming like Jesus.

It takes time and community and friendships and struggle and suffering and all of life.

It shapes you into the kind of person that you know that Jesus wants you to be like.

But when you're brand new born again, it's you're not there yet.

Okay, it takes some time and the old Adam or the old you dies hard.

Those old habits die hard and sometimes you want to go back to them and so sometimes you got to just let go.

When we were in Israel we're in Jerusalem we found this gate in the city walls, the small little gate.

It's a little window, actually a gate, and all these ancient cities had these walls around them and these small little gates where you go into them and enter the city.

And so all throughout the ancient world, people would wander into these cities and they'd walk into this gate and they'd go into the city.

They'd enter the city.

The problem was they would often show up with a whole bunch of stuff like camel, horses, donkeys.

They have tons of just baggage like things they own, their wealth, their stuff, food, all kinds of items, and they couldn't fit the camel through the gate.

So they have to unpack all their junk and leave it at the front in order to enter.

Are you with me so far?

Jesus says in the Gospels it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

By the way, I didn't tell you.

Do you know what they call that gate?

That's that small and tiny, the eye of the needle.

Sometimes you've got so much baggage and junk and material wealth that you're banking on Saving you, giving you hope, giving you life.

You drag it around.

Remember it's unforgiveness or resentment.

You drag it around and Jesus like just let it go.

Just come on in.

You can't fit through that hole with all that junk you're carrying.

Let it go and we're lugging it around.

No, this is who I am.

This is my stuff.

I got to keep this in my wealth.

I worked so hard.

No, I'm not going to forgive my mother.

She was awful to me.

I'm not going to.

And the whole time Jesus like just come, let it go.

I'll take it.

Let it go.

I've never seen a U-Haul in the back of a hearse, by the way.

Never seen it.

Let it go and come on in to the life, the freedom, the goodness that God has for you.

Stop lugging it around.

You've been born anew.

That old, you can die and it takes time, but it's an invitation to discipleship.

Come, lean into it, embrace it, learn how to navigate the culture and how to still look like Jesus.

In the meantime, I'll be born again into a living hope.

Not a stale hope, not a dead hope, not a warmed up second hand microwave leftover hope, but a living hope For the next three weeks, from an unpacked, a small.

What does it mean to be a Christian in a culture going the opposite direction?

How do we remind ourselves who we are and who's we are.

The language I love is May we wake up to the way things actually and really are.

You were already loved by God.

He's already died for you.

You don't have to do anything else, just let your stuff go and come on in.

It's a free gift, the mercy of God.

I want to close with the story.

I love this story.

It's one of my favorite.

You probably heard it a couple of you heard it before, but it's so perfectly in capital.

It's how I see this.

I just want to share it.

Good friend of mine had adopted two little boys.

They were raised in foster care system but the first five and seven years of their life and it was a horrible experience for them They've been bounced around, they'd suffered under all kinds of Violence and abuse was horrible.

So my friend gets them.

He becomes their legal dad, their father.

He takes them home and they're hanging out.

And about a week or so in they're hanging out.

He's hanging out all the son Patrick on the couch or watching TV, kind of goofing around, and then Patrick gets quiet.

They're kind of becoming gross in the TV show and about a minute or so later he hears Patrick start to cry out.

Dad, don't leave me, dad.

Dad, don't leave me again.

Please don't leave me, dad.

I can't, I don't know what I'll do.

Please don't leave me, dad.

My friend Jeff was confused, like I'm right here, what do you?

So he looks down and realizes that Patrick had fallen asleep.

Now, sometimes you fall asleep, darling, it's a right.

Nothing gave me greater privilege than to lean over and shake him awake.

Patrick, I'm right here, I haven't left you.

I'm right here.

Look where you are.

You couldn't be closer to me than you are right at this moment.

You're right in my lap.

He's like yeah, right, his eyes is big, irish blue eyes.

He's got so big, and the relief that just came over his eyes was indescribable.

Friends, sometimes we forget who we are and who's we are.

And, by the way, if you're here this morning, you're not a Christian, or you're like you're not really a believer, or you're kind of like a skeptic, and I get it, that's totally fine.

I love you, I'm glad you're here anyway, but let me just for a moment pronounce over you what I think is the fundamental truth of the universe.

And so maybe for a minute, if you can put aside your maybe any baggage you have at the church or any like disbelief or Skepticism.

Just for a moment, and just put it aside for a minute, because I would tell you as well you are the chosen one of God, for God so loved the world.

That includes you.

You are the beloved son and daughter of God.

You might not be acting like it, and I get it.

You might be dragging that luggage around, I get it.

I want to tell you that God loves you Because of his mercy and goodness, not because of it.

You did.

It's the mercy of God and for everybody else.

May you remember who you are and who's you are.

You've been chosen by God, I don't know.

May you wake up to the goodness and love of Jesus this morning.

Amen.