The Story | The Law for Life

Well, hey everybody, again, it's great to see you.

My name is Josh. I have the joy of serving as

pastor here at the Garden. Well, this morning we are

continuing our series titled The Story.

It's a 10 week series and we're going Genesis to Revelation

beginning to the end this morning.

We're in week 4 of this series, and really our big objective

across this whole series is to try and make sense of how this

ancient library of texts from different geographies and

languages and different cultures and spaces all together forms

and tells 1 coherent and beautiful story about how God is

redeeming the world in and through Jesus.

And this morning we are picking up the pace.

The first three weeks we covered 15 chapters and this morning

we're going to cover, you know, the next seven books.

We're going to cover the rest of the Old Testament in the next

three weeks. So we're going to be moving

quickly this morning. If you are a if you are a nerd,

this is this is a good week for you.

Like I'm going to drop some drop some Bible nerddom on here on us

here today. But I think as we look

particularly at the book of Exodus and especially on the

giving of the law and the Mosaic covenant, I believe that there's

a lot here for us as individuals who are following Jesus in

Boston in the 21st century today.

And I'm excited to unpack that with you.

Growing up, for me, there was a couple of years where I attended

a private school. It was a residential space and

that honestly, the rules were super duper onerous, came from a

conservative background, and this was a space.

It was a Christian School and man, we had rules about

everything. How you dressed, when mealtimes

were, how you showed up, like how you interacted with the

opposite sex, the language that you could use.

Everything felt like it was regulated and regimented.

And honestly, I hated it. I spent most of that like period

of my life trying to figure ways to to to break the rules without

getting in trouble was a primary objective for me in that season.

And and I would describe looking back, I would say like that

posture. Well, there was some good

intentions behind it had a lot of just legalism, a lot of kind

of rules forward, do these things so that you can be

accepted. And I think a lot of us, I bring

that account up because although I suspect that most of you don't

have an exact like super conservative school space that

you went to, whether it was in your home life or just an image

that you've internalized from somewhere else.

I think a number of us do have this imagination that this is

how God is. This is what God's law is like.

Like following God, I think many of us imagine is kind of, you

know, being squeezed down into this narrow and constraining

space where you can't do anything, you can't have much

fun and, and, and you're just trying to like make sure that

you don't step across the lines and get smited.

I don't, I don't know if the, the verb tense there is correct,

but like we're just, we're just like, can I, can I not get in

trouble functions as a significant part of the

spiritual life of a lot of Christians.

I know, and especially when we start to talk about God's law.

But the picture we see here that Phil read for us, and it's

presented in the book of Exodus is actually very different.

It's a story that connects this story, the story of giving of

the Mosaic Law together with these stories that we've been

looking at over the past several weeks.

Here's the vision that God gives his people.

Again, in verses 5 and 6 of chapter 19, we read this.

If you obey Me fully and keep my covenant, that's the law,

obedience and the Torah, then out of all of the nations you

will be My treasured possession. Although the whole earth is

mine, you will be for Me a Kingdom of priests, a holy

nation. Now you may remember in the

first installment of the series, the creation story, we

discovered that that humanity was created to exist in the

presence of God and to extend His purposes in the world.

And this is what God is saying here.

The law exists not to hem you in and make sure you don't have any

fun, not to avoid being punished, but to allow you to

steward my presence and to extend my purposes.

This is what priests do. And I want to suggest to you

something this morning that might be different than kind of

how you grew up thinking about this.

I know a lot of us have this imagination in our head.

I, I, I was taught this at certain points of kind of like

the Old Testament is all about law and rules in the New

Testament is all about grace. Has anybody, anybody grew up

hearing or thinking something along those lines?

I don't think that's actually consistent with what we see here

in Torah in the Old Testament. Instead, what we see is, is not

a, not a prerequisite for being adopted into the family of God,

but a pathway for flourishing for those who have already been

adopted. Let me say that again, the law

is not a prerequisite for entering the family.

Rather, it's a pathway for folks who are already in.

And look here at what the text says in verse 4.

God reminds the people. He says, you yourselves have

seen what I did to Egypt. I carried you on eagle's wings

and brought you to myself. Before God talks at all about

what the people are to do, what they're supposed to accomplish,

or how they're supposed to behave, He reminds them what He

has done. I carried you.

I brought you. He talks about who they already

are, treasured priests, holy. And and this rescue that he's

referring to here in Exodus 19 is of course, a reference to the

other key moment in this book, the Exodus, the event after

which the book itself is named. All right, so let's try and

catch up because we left off last week with Abraham and this

covenant to Abraham in chapter 15, and now we're all the way at

Sinai, the receiving of the law. So how did we get from here to

there? All right, so two weeks ago we

saw that God's, or three weeks ago now we saw that God's

people, the first humans, were presented with essentially what

amounts to 2 doors, right? An option to trust God and obey

him, or an option to distrust him, take a shortcut, seize

control and go their own way. Of course they choose door 2.

They sin. And over the next chapters of

Genesis we see this spiral of disconnection and death which

follows. Last week we saw Abraham, who is

so significant here in the story because again, he's kind of

called out of nowhere, but he chooses instead door 1, the door

of faith, the door of obedience. And God cuts this covenant with

him as we saw a promising descendants land and a blessing

to the world. But even Abraham doesn't

consistently choose door number one, right?

At times, he also goes his own way.

In fact, if you look at Genesis chapter 12 where we were last

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

week, we read about the part of the covenant like the very next

section of that chapter records the story of Abraham.

No sooner than God has brought him into this land that he's

promised him, all of a sudden there's a famine.

And Abraham is like, I'd rather like solve for this.

I'm going to go to Egypt and migrate down here to get what I

really need. What a picture for us, even

those who are followers of Jesus, of our tendency, our

temptation to look for comfort, to look for control, and to be

willing to take a shortcut to find it.

This is what Abraham does. He goes instead to Egypt.

Egypt is a mess. Read that section of Genesis.

And ultimately, Egypt itself becomes a picture in the

biblical narrative of what it looks like when we choose to

disobey God and go our own way. All right, we're jumping forward

2 generations after Abraham, his sons are there, and once again,

they're faced with a similar situation.

Again, there's a famine. What are they going to do?

And man, if there's a beautiful picture of generational sin in

the Bible, this is probably it, right?

Because his family says, oh, we know what Gramps did, right?

We'll go to Egypt, They got food and off they go, following in

his footsteps the same way. And then what happens in Egypt

is something that I think many of us can relate to.

They wind up in exile. See, the shortcut that they

reach for to bail them out of a bad situation becomes precisely

the thing that enslaves them, right?

They're they're looking for an escape and get instead they get

exploitation. We see Pharaoh, the first really

awful villain in the text of Scripture, right?

They start off on their own volition, looking for a shortcut

to what they need, and instead they end up out of God's

presence, out of God's purposes, and in bondage to the exact

thing and place that they weren't reaching for.

And man, I think this is an experience that every person in

this room has had at some level or another.

Like maybe you've been trying to do a little bit of retail

therapy here and there, right? Shopping to soothe that itch and

found yourself with, Oh my gosh, these credit card bills will not

stop. Maybe you've been overwhelmed by

the awfulness that you're experiencing in the world or

even in your home. And so you reach for one of

these little devices, right? Just to numb it a little bit.

And before you know what's happening, you're caught in this

dopamine loop of doom scrolling, can't get out.

All of a sudden your attention is shot, your sleep is shot,

you're locked in. Do the same thing in so many

areas of our life, man. I want fulfilment, I want

connection. God hasn't sent the right person

yet. Maybe this person will be good

enough. Let me let me see if I can get a

little bit of fulfilment over here.

We know that it's not right, but we step outside to take a

shortcut. And so often, isn't it true?

I know I can attest to this. We find ourselves enslaved to

exactly the same things that we tried to use as an escape.

And so this is what happens to God's people here.

And at this point, enter Moses. Because there is this cycle

which happens throughout this portion of Scripture we're going

to see in the coming weeks as well of sin, of exile, and then

of rescue, right? God's people sin.

There are consequences. Their sin ends up resulting in

this pattern of, of disconnection and death.

But God does not abandon them. And this is what we see here in,

in, in Exodus chapter 6 and in verse 6, Exodus comes to Moses

Exodus 6 · chapter mention

and he says, Hey, I am the Lord. I will bring you the people out

from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

I will free you from being enslaved to them, and I will

redeem you with an outstretched arm.

I will redeem you. And then he goes on to say this.

He says, I will take you as my own people, and I will be your

God. Then you will know that I am the

Lord your God who brought you out from under the yoke of the

Egyptians. That's rescue.

That's deliverance, That's liberation.

But there's also this word here, which is maybe a little bit less

familiar to us, the word redeem. Redeem is the Hebrew word Gaal

here. And Gaal means to restore to

rightful ownership. So say, for instance, maybe

you've been here, We live in a city, You had a bike, It was out

of doors, chained up, and then you didn't have a bike, right?

You came out and said chain was slashed, right?

Somebody brought those Clippers out and the bike is gone.

All right, So this the second part doesn't happen as often,

but maybe you registered said bike and then it got found later

and returned to you, right? It would be a great ending to

the story. All right, Well, if that bike is

was restored to, if it was brought back into the original

ownership, if we were Jewish, we would use the word gal to

redeem. It's not always the the picture

that we have of redeemed, but that's what the word actually

means. It means to take something which

has been lost, which has been stolen and and restore it to its

proper place. And this is what God promises to

do with his people. He says, Hey, you got lost, you

went your own way and you got locked up.

You were stolen away and enslaved.

But hey, I'm going to come. I'm going to break those

shackles free. I'm going to free you from that

which binds you, and I'm also going to restore you into my

family. And of course, over the

following chapters of Exodus, there is this incredible story

and many of you know it, right? We've got the let my people go,

Charlton Heston moment. We've got like all of these

spaces where God shows up and goes to war essentially with the

king of Egypt, the baddest man alive, and through a series of

plagues demonstrates that he is the one true God.

God is going basically, not only am I going to break the chains

that bind you, but I'm also going to reintroduce myself.

Hey, this is who I am. I am the God of your father's,

the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

I'm the God of power and I am the God who has the rightful

claim on your allegiance. And towards the end of this

whole story, there are are a couple of events that happened.

These are events that may be familiar to you.

I wish we could like talk about this for a week, but but

specifically Passover and the parting of the Red Sea.

Obviously, these are moments of deliverance, right In the final

plague, the the murder and evil which has been visited upon the

people of God is now visited upon their oppressors.

Justice is served and people are, are, are set free.

And, and how are the people of God spared?

Well, there's this mark of blood that gets posted up above the

doorways of their homes, of their households.

And what is that all about here? Well, it's, it's a hook we're

looking forward to something we're going to talk about later

in the story with Jesus later tonight or later this this

morning. But it's also an identity

symbol. See, very often blood was used

as a symbol almost in the way that we would use a wedding

ring. God is making a claim on his

people. He's saying everyone marked by

the blood, these are my people. And then we Fast forward shortly

thereafter and what happens? The people began to escape.

They, their, their Pharaoh says that's it, get out of here.

Peace, not peace, but get out of here.

And so they take off and God parts the Red Sea, right?

And if you're if you're noticing here, the ways in which God

takes these chaos waters that we took in verse 1 and creates

something out of them. If you're thinking of baptism,

this moment where we pass through the water to become new

creation. And you see the layers of

symbolism and some of you all I got to tell you are so into

marvel. You you like no, all the

backstories, all the villains like all the like this is how it

was in the comic books. This some of y'all like got the

hip hop history right. You know, like this is this MC

did this and he did this and he pulled in this this beat and

this is this mixtape. Like some of us, some of y'all I

know are swifties in here. And it's just like man, it's

like layers and layers and layers, right friends, we need

to be like that with the Bible. The Bible is crazy.

The layers, the callbacks, the intricacies, the plot twists in

this story are incredible. And this is what's going on

here. God is basically saying by blood

and water, I have redeemed you. Oh, I have restored you to

myself. You are not my people.

It's beautiful. It's what he does with us.

So God rescues his people out of Egypt.

He redeems them in this way, this identity marker, and then

he brings them to Sinai, the mountain where he will give them

the law. Back in the spring, we got the

exciting news that my daughter Ava had been admitted to a

school near our house that we were excited for her to be at

and that was great. We kind of celebrated and had a

little party. And then a couple of weeks

early, a couple of weeks ago, Ava actually started at that

school, right? And we, we began the process of

learning about pick up and drop off routines and Oh my gosh,

like the what they do everyday and all the consent forms that

we have to sign and like, don't bring peanuts.

And like, you know, it's just like an endless list of things

that you have to be aware of. And I think this is actually a

pretty good metaphor for what happens here because see, we

often again misunderstand the law as a prerequisite for

getting in the family. But but what we see here clearly

in the book of Exodus is that God's people are actually

already restored to him. They are redeemed to him by

grace through his sovereign action.

They did not fight off Pharaoh. They did not part the sea.

God did that, right? So God brings them to himself by

his own power. But then they get to Sinai and

there's a constitution. He says, hey, guys, like here's

how we live in this family, right?

Here's the way that we do things.

There's some things that are in, there's some things that are

out. If you walked in this morning,

you passed a sign on which you saw these identity statements.

We attune to the Holy Spirit. We imitate Jesus, we cultivate

Shalom, right? This is who we are attempting to

live into. This is who we are as a church

community. And this is kind of the same

thing as what's happening at the Mather School.

What we are attempting to do here, God with his people is

saying like, you're already in the family, but then here's how

we live together. This is what it looks like to

walk that out in our family. And look, this is super

important for us because I think people often get thrown by the

law of Moses, like, first of all, because it has some things

that I think I hope we're on board with, like do not kill,

honour your parents. Everybody up here agrees with

that today, right? Like there are some things in

the law that are obvious, they seem universal, right?

These are good things for all people.

And then if you're in Boston, you won't have to be here very

long before somebody is like the Bible and shellfish and like the

crossing of fibres together, like what, what, what is even

going on, right? And the law also contains a

bunch of those things, right? Things that don't make any sense

to us and don't actually apply to us.

So how do we figure out like, how do we make sense of this

question of like, what pieces of this are relevant to us and what

is not? Well, the law is absolutely a

unique document for a particular people in a particular time and

place, right? So it doesn't just transfer one

to one. I know some Christians are doing

that. And if you want to, good luck

first of all, right? But also we see clearly in Jesus

that that's not actually the way, but there are the purposes

of the law and understanding these purposes are so helpful

for us. And, and you can understand the

purposes pretty simply across three major categories.

And all of these categories are relevant for you and me.

All right, So the first big category of what's going on in

the law is these rituals of identity.

We'll say these, these rituals of identity.

And there's all of these ways that God prescribes from Exodus

all the way through Deuteronomy, where over and over he explains

what it means to live as the people of God.

And there's a lot of thing that has to do with remembering your

story, understanding where you came from.

Like these people are going to go through generations.

And we are so quick to forget, aren't we?

And so God's puts in place things like Sabbath, this, this

weekly ritual, he places these festivals in their communal life

that will shape them year after year, things like the day of

Atonement. And, and, and there's also all

these like physical and tangible markers like the, the, the, the

text of scripture that they will notice on their door frame.

And actually even in some cases where on their forehead, right?

There's all of these things to remind the people of God who

they are. That's the first category,

rituals for identity. But second, there are also

boundaries for holiness. There are boundaries for

holiness. See, God is significantly

concerned here in Torah that his people, this people that he's

calling out from all of these other nations are going to in

fact wind up being kind of just like all of the other nations,

right? And, and all of the other

nations, not great, right? Corruption and idolatry,

selfishness, right? Bigotry, us, them.

Like there's all of these different ways in which the

cultures around them are actually toxic.

And so God puts in place a great deal of of law, of rules of

guidance to maintain the purity of the people.

And some of this has to do with actually like avoiding clear

sin, things that we would think of as sin.

And some of it is just like, Hey, stay away from those

people, right? We're just going to have some

different food laws so that who you eat dinner with is different

because they, they're going to rub off on you, right?

You can't actually be my covenant people if you're

constantly hanging out with the folk who are taking you in the

other direction. So God has these boundaries for

holiness, these these boundary markers and rituals, everything

from sexual ethics to the the prohibitions on idolatry to the

food laws and many more. And finally, there are what we

would call rules for flourishing.

So not only are there rituals for identity and boundaries for

holiness, but they're also rules for flourishing.

And God is very deeply concerned about this.

See, his people was never intended to be a private thing

for individuals so that in eternity, after they die, they

go to a different place. That's part of it, but that's

not the primary lens of the story.

See, actually a great deal of Torah is about like, how do we

care for the people on the margins?

How about the orphans? How about the widows?

How about the people who don't have a home and our sojourners

with us? We want to make sure that we

don't treat them just like we were treated by Pharaoh and the

Egyptians. Like, how are we going to set up

our society, our economics, our social patterns in a way that

makes sure that no one ends up persistently on the bottom?

We're going to have things like the year of Jubilee where all

debts are released every second year.

Everyone is set free. All private property goes back

to the person, back to the community, right?

Things are, all of these things are being reset on a regular

basis to create equity in the community, right?

People are told, don't harvest your whole field.

Make sure you leave some right for the for the folks who don't

have enough. So it's not just rituals for

personal holiness. They're also cultivating this

way of life together as a community that creates

flourishing for all, not just for them, but for others as

well. And, and the reason for this is

very simply the, the text makes clear is so that you will be a

witness to the nations, so that everyone will look at your

common life together and say, oh, that's what God is like.

That is what God is like. God is, is, is holy and just.

And, and in order for you to remain rooted in this, you need

this constitution, you need this pathway in order to live in the

family. Now, ultimately we discover that

Israel does a very poor job of following this kind of same as

us, right? What we'll see all the way

through. In fact, if you look at Torah,

there's all of these laws, right?

And but they're not all dropped in one place.

It's like some laws, some stories of them disobeying those

laws, some more laws, some more stories of them disobeying those

laws, some more laws, more stories of disobedience.

It's just like, it's a mess, guys.

They don't follow. In fact, we see this repeated

cycle of sin, right, disobedience, exile and rescue

over and over and over. So what the the book of Judges

is all about, it's just watching this pattern play on repeat.

But for us, I want to pause here.

We're going to pick up this thread next week, but I want to

pause here and, and think about the law for us because according

to the New Testament, we are not bound by the Mosaic law.

Like if you are into oysters, you want to wear some Lululemon.

Good news. There may be other reasons why

you shouldn't do that. I don't know.

But like, nothing in the Bible, right?

You're good, freed up permission from here.

But I think we very often because of that, because we

understand, we get like Paul is there, we've read some of that.

We understand that we're not bound by the law in those ways.

But very often we still find ourselves falling into one of

two ditches, one of two pitfalls, if you will.

On the one hand, we imagine that the Christian life, the life of

faith, is all about earning our acceptance.

After all, why would we have all of these rules?

So in in order to, in order to be good enough, to be worthy, to

be accepted, to experience the love of God, we've just got to,

we've got to follow the rules. We've got to climb this ladder

of acceptance in order to belong.

Some of us believe that and some of us don't believe that, but we

still believe that, if you know what I mean, right?

Like we wouldn't say that on a test, but if you look at our

lives, we're still striving, hustling and trying to earn our

keep and friends even before we get to the New Testament in

Jesus, we're going there. But even here we see that that

is that is never been the way this relationship with God has

worked from the very beginning. God calls his people by grace.

He breaks off their bondage and he says, welcome, come on in

into my presence. I want to be with you.

I want to cooperate with you to extend my purposes in the world

from the beginning. Friends, if you this morning are

still trying to get your life cleaned up enough before you can

be a Christian. If you're trying to do enough

right thing so that someday you'll be worthy of love and

belonging, I have good news. Like stop it.

You don't have to. That's not the way.

God already says yes to you. He already welcomes you.

You're already in. The acceptance letter is sitting

on your desk and all you have to do is say I'm in.

All you have to do is receive the gift.

Even here with God's people in the Hebrew Bible, we see the

same thing. Grace comes first, not guidance.

There's no hurdles they have to jump over in order to become

part of the family. They just have to trust God.

So that's the first thing. Some of us are in the ditch of,

of striving and trying to pay our way in to be good enough to

get there. But there is another ditch and,

and honestly, I think probably more of some of y'all are over

here. Some of y'all are over here.

Sometimes I'm over here, sometimes I'm over here.

And the other ditch is honestly, it looks more like entitlement

and, and at times the church is at fault here, honestly, because

we have focused so much on how you become part of God's family,

which is good. We should do that.

That's really important. But we focus so much on becoming

part of God's family that we haven't talked much about what

it looks like to live as a member of God's family.

Like what does it mean to actually live in the way of

Jesus, to live in the way of love?

The law is given as a gift. You see this throughout.

It's not a burden, It's not a problem.

David says, like, I love your law.

It's the pathway to flourishing. And look, the Mosaic law is a

different law for a different time and place, but we still

have the law of love. We still have the the direction

of the Spirit. The New Testament still has a

lot to tell you about how to live and how do we relate to

that? I think sometimes, sometimes I

sometimes maybe you get in this posture.

We're like, I prayed the prayer I'm in.

I did the thing. I go to church like I'm I'm one

of the good guys now. Like that's it.

And friends, adoption is not the end of the journey.

Praise God that you have been adopted by grace and also great.

Now you've got to figure out how to be part of the family, what

it looks like because there's some culture, there's some

rhythms, there's some some ways of doing and sharing life that

shapes us in the way of love. And so friends, I want to invite

us to consider this morning, what does that look like for

you? Like, what does that look like?

And not just for you personally, but in the in the community that

you're in, like here as our broader church community, we do

a lot of things in these spaces, but also in the smaller groups

that you are part of. What are your rhythms of life?

Do you have rituals for identity?

Are you doing things on a regular basis that reminds you

who you are and whose you are that help to ground you in the

reality that that you have been made part of God's family by

grace? My friends, honestly, a lot of

us I think would have a lot more joy if we spent more time in the

presence of Jesus, just wondering at his awe and his

goodness and his love and his grace towards us.

There is rough stuff out in the world, and yet we have been

rescued. Praise God.

Like if you've been liberated from something, we need to think

about that. You need to be reminding

yourself about that regularly, getting excited about that,

worshipping God about that. So we need these rituals of

formation. That's why we come to church on

Sunday. It's why we make space in our

lives or quiet time to spend time on our face before God each

day. It's it's why we have things

like the church retreat and these other spaces.

Like there's not a legalistic requirement for you to do these

things. You don't get a merit badge

because you show up. But you absolutely do need

rituals in your life to remind you of who you are and where

you're going and what's most important.

Friends we also need in our lives and boundaries for

holiness. Like we are not immune, right?

We're supposed to be for our neighbors.

We're supposed to be loving our neighbors showing up.

It's not about just retreating from the world, but also if

we're not going to look exactly like our neighbors, right?

There need to be some. Like how you spend your money or

invest or save should be different from somebody who

doesn't follow Jesus. Like how you program your life

and your kids lives, your daily routine, your weekly stuff, what

programs you're in. Like I'm not here to tell you

how to do it, but I am here to say like that being a Christian

should matter for that, right? You should be thoughtful about

what does it look like to build a life that that allows me to

practice the presence of Jesus, that allows me to extend his

purposes in the world. That isn't just about like, how

do I, like, get the best possible job, make the most

possible money, have the most spectacular vacations available?

Those are good things. I'm not against any of that.

But if those are at the very centre of your life, your

liturgies don't have enough holiness in them.

Friends, we need things that will form us as a community, not

just as individuals into rules for flourishing, right?

We need to practice justice and hospitality and inclusion and

mercy and generosity as a community and as individuals

within that community, right? The way of Jesus is still not

just about going to heaven when we die, praise God for that.

But it's also about learning to live in a way that speaks, that

declares to the nations and to those around us, this is what

God's family looks like. This is how they move together.

This is how they live together. And we need some habits for

that, right? We need to, we need habits of

generosity. We need habits of solidarity.

We need habits of presence if we're going to become those

kinds of people. Look, I've covered a lot of

ground this morning. I'm curious about what this

looks like for you. We're going to begin to move

into a time of response and friends this morning.

This message is not about following a checklist, A to do

list. It's not about some new kind of

law developed and designed by Pastor Josh and accepted by

everyone else. But I am going to suggest to you

that you have the Holy Spirit, you have the word of God.

And our lives need to be saturated by those, guided by

those, not just so we can avoid punishment, not so that we can

be part of the family. If you accepted Jesus, you

already got that part, but so that we can go on this journey

together of becoming a people of love, a people who are hold

space for the presence of God and extend his purposes in the

world, who love God and love our neighbors well.

And this invitation is for all of us, God's people then and

God's people now. The law, friends, is not an

entrance exam for applicants, but a syllabus for those who are

already part of the community. How are we engaging the

curriculum, Friends? This morning we're going to

pivot in our gathering to receive communion.

And this is really appropriate because I just talked about

rituals for identity, and there's no beautiful one than

this right here, because this reminds us who we are, where we

come from, and why we are beloved.

It's a call back explicitly to the story we've already talked

about today at Passover when God used his blood to to to mark out

his people. Blood is still a marker for us

today, and so as we partake of the juice or the wine that

represents his blood, as we eat the cracker that represents his

body, we root ourselves in this story, this memory, this

identity that we are God's people.

Rescued friends, how have you been rescued today?

How has Jesus intervention in your life been some good news

that gets you excited? Do you have a story of

liberation that you are excited about wanting to tell people

about? Let's remember that.

And when when we see these these guidelines, these rules, when

the New Testament has some stuff to tell us about how we live as

a people, may we shift our relationship to it from

something that we kind of onerously go along with in order

to avoid punishment to a faithful belief that God desires

our flourishing and that of the world and has entrusted his way

to us in order to guide us into that.

Friends, we me, we be people who live in and from his very life.