Resting in Peace (Derik Fuller) | Expectant

Seat, it's great to have you here with us this second week of

Advent. Just before we get started this

morning, just want to let you know some of you may be aware of

a bill that is been in discussion this week in our

Parliament, Bill C9, and the discussion around removing

sincerely held religious belief as a defense of free speech.

And I just want to let you know that Pastor Kirk and I are aware

we have spoken to a number of other pastors in the area and we

have put together a letter to send to our MPs to express our

concern about that. We would stand with the

government in wanting to make sure that no one is a victim of

violence because of incitement through words.

But we have a deep concern and conviction that we are able to

preach the whole counsel of God without fear.

And I know this reality. I know sooner or later, if you

are here at Forward Church, I will end up saying something.

Pastor Kirk will end up saying something because we preach from

the word of God. That's going to bother you.

It's going to invent you. It's going to maybe strike a

nerve with you. That's what happens when we get

an encounter of truth that transcends culture and we would

never want to allow the culture of the time to affect what we

preach. So we're always going to preach

the full council of God's word here at Forward Church.

And whatever happens with legislation, that wouldn't stop

us from doing that. But we think it's our duty to

respond and use the the levers of influence that we have to

make our concerns known. And so just wanted to keep you

aware in case you've heard some things about this bill.

There's nothing to be scared of. God's in control, God's

sovereign, but we want to do our due diligence in letting our

position be known to those who He has placed an authority over

us. I'm going to invite you to turn

to Matthew chapter one, verse 18.

You walked in the door and you would know this Christmas season

has arrived, right? The Christmas tree was out

there. In fact, the Christmas trees are

out there. I'm so thankful for the team of

people that have been in decorating out there in here

over the last week or so. Man, it looks, I mean, yeah,

let's give them a round of applause.

I, I forgot last week the lights are going up in here and I

walked in. I was like, man, this is

beautiful, this is so great. And just loved watching the tree

come in this week and everybody rally around and work.

And yesterday we had Sharing Christmas and it was amazing to

watch our guests walk into the building.

Thank you for all of you. We had so many who served at

Sharing Christmas. Let's give them a round of

applause too. One lady, she walked in and and

I was close to the door and I heard her say this.

It's like heaven. And, and what I was so blessed

by yesterday was I think that was the experience of a lot of

our guests in the building, that because of you who served and

put in so much time and effort, man, you brought a little bit of

Jesus into the lives of everybody who stepped into the

door. It was such a blessing.

I, I mean, I just heard so much feedback from our guests, the

people who attended, just how overwhelmed they were.

And we're hoping to see many of them back at a Christmas Eve

service this year. I said Christmas arrived, some

of you, it arrived November 1st because you're weirdos.

It was like Halloween done Christmas here.

But traditionally this season that we find ourselves in in the

church calendar is not Christmas.

This is Advent. The the Christmas or the

Christmas starts December 25th with the Christmas and then it's

12 days of feasting and celebration.

Some of us would probably be better off if Christmas was

limited to 12 days of feasting celebration.

I don't know I would be if it wasn't like 2 months of feasting

and celebration. But traditionally it goes from

December 25th to January or or December 25th to January 5th.

And then Advent is this season of four weeks leading up to

Christmas. And Advent comes from the Latin

word Adventist, which means arrival or coming and see.

Advent is, is meant to be a season not of feasting and

celebration, but of preparation and anticipation.

It's, it's this season where we talk about these four things

that we're talking about over these four weeks of, of hope and

peace and joy and love, but in anticipation of Christ coming to

bring those. And then now on the other side

of his first coming in anticipation of his second

coming, when it will come in full completion.

So Advent is a season of not yet.

Advent is a season of of tension and, and I have a sneaking

suspicion, although we probably haven't consciously thought

about this as churches or as a culture, that that's exactly why

we've kind of written Advent out of the story, because we love

everything to be wrapped up neat and tidy.

We don't like the seasons of tension, we like the seasons of

completion. We want to move straight from

tension to resolution, but Advent forces us to live in this

in between time. It makes me think of the reality

that Amanda and I have faced when we have moved houses

before. I don't know what moving is like

for you, but this is a little bit of what moving.

I don't have a, I don't have a picture of Amanda, but that is

basically the face that my wife makes.

She said I could share this. I got permission.

When we move and everything is just in, in chaos and in boxes

and our life is in pieces around us, she just freezes because she

just feels overwhelmed. She, she, she gets paralyzed in

the center of it. And I think for a lot of us,

like that picture in some way symbolizes how the entirety of

the world feels just chaotic, uncertain, unsteady.

Everything in, I mean, the pieces feel like they're all

there, but we're not sure where to find them.

I I, I, I think that's the spirit of our age, this spirit

of uncertainty that we live in where it feels like either

everything is falling apart or everything could fall apart

tomorrow morning when we open up the news, right?

I don't know if you've been, I feel like I've been living that

for the last six years. There's just this low level of

anxiety that just permeates everything, all of culture and,

and gets weaponized by social media.

That's the society. Why low?

And then there's the personal level, right?

There's the reality that always, at all times in all of our

lives, all it takes is a single phone call or text and your life

gets flipped upside down. All it takes is is 4 simple

words. These four simple words, hey, we

need to talk. And all of a sudden everything

kind of starts spinning around you.

We just live our lives and make our plans.

They get upended all the time by a job loss or by a diagnosis or

by a secret that gets brought from the darkness into the

light. And I, I just want to let you

know that that uncertainty, that, that feeling that peace

could be shattered, that that reality, that peace does get

shattered. That's nothing new.

It's not a new reality. It is what it looks like to live

in this world. It, it's the world that Jesus

enters into. So let's, let's look at this

story, because this is the story of Jesus arrival on to the

scene. This is the story of the

nativity. Don't take my word for it.

Matthew says this in Matthew 118.

He says that the birth of Jesus came about this way.

Now listen to what the this way is, how Jesus birth comes about.

After his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, it was

discovered before they came together that she was pregnant

from the Holy Spirit. That's the story that Jesus

enters into a story of relational chaos, right?

This is the story of Joseph, who is the earthly father, the one

who will take care of and father Jesus here on earth.

He knows what it's like to have a life thrown into disarray with

an announcement that comes to him with a word that comes to

him. One moment Joseph is there and

he is looking forward to his upcoming wedding.

Man, he's stoked and excited. He's got this wonderful fiance

by the name of Mary. They're looking forward to

getting married. The next thing that he knows, he

finds out that the woman he's engaged to is pregnant and he's

never slept with her. Imagine being Mary trying to

explain this to Joseph. It's not that I slept with

anybody else. The Holy Spirit came and now I'm

going to have a baby, Joseph. And it's not your baby and you

know it's not your baby, but just trust me, it's the Holy

Spirit. This is not a relational speed

bump in a relationship, is it? This is this is not like Mary

and Joseph debating, OK, when we get married, whose parents are

we going to spend Passover with? No, this is total relational

crisis. This is a life altering moment.

I don't in a Canadian culture. We just don't understand the

level of what is going on. This is an honor shame culture

and this is incredible shame on Joseph because either Joseph did

it or Mary went behind Joseph's back in either way, it's not

good. Joseph's peace in this moment,

man. Matthew makes it clear to us

again, Matthew is speaking to a Jewish audience who understood

very well when he said that Jesus birth came about in this

way. This is scandalous.

His life has been blown to pieces.

And so today I want to look at Joseph's story to find out this

How can we find peace when our world is falling to pieces?

How can we find peace when our world is falling to pieces?

Because Joseph's world has been turned upside down.

Joseph's world is falling to pieces.

So what's he going to do? Well, let's read verse 19.

So her husband Joseph, being a righteous man, not wanting to

disgrace her publicly, decided to divorce her secretly.

Remember last week we were looking at the story of Simeon,

and it's interesting that Simeon also had that word righteous

applied to him, that Simeon was a a devout and righteous man.

And now we're told Joseph is a righteous man.

We should talk about what does that word righteous mean?

Well, righteous means that we have a right standing with God.

So it's saying that Joseph in God's eyes had a right standing

with him. He was in in good stead with

God. Righteousness, though, comes

through faith in Christ. In the Old Testament and in this

moment, it's faith that God is a promise, keeping God who will

keep his word in bringing a rescuer, in bringing a Messiah.

And so in the Old Testament, people are saved by faith in

believing in the truth that God's promise will come to pass.

In the New Testament, they're saved by faith in the same

Jesus. And we are saved by faith in

trusting that that rescuer did come, that Savior has come as

the Savior of the world, that that Jesus was that one who was

promised. And then faith works itself out

in obedience. It displays itself in the way

that righteousness, good works show up in our life.

It's the evidence of trust. That's that's what obedience is.

It's the evidence of trust. So Joseph, as you can see in

here, he's a man who wants to do the right thing.

He has faith in God and is wrestling with what it looks

like to be righteous in this. But there's something else I

want you to see. I want you to see that bad

things can happen to righteous people right here.

Here's Joseph. He is, he's sorting through all

of the realities of this world. He, he's confused.

He's sitting there. How could this happen?

He's hurt. He's got a deep sense of

betrayal. He's fearful.

We know he's fearful because he's about to be told don't be

afraid, but he's fearful. His reputation is on the line

and just I think that we need to understand and know that you can

be righteous and still have your world shaken.

You can be righteous and still have all of these emotional

realities that you're grappling through.

You can be righteous and still have a really difficult,

terrible stuff come into your life and be confused about it

and not understand why this is happening.

Being a follower of Jesus does not mean that you will never

have your life fall to pieces, quite the opposite.

Jesus himself later on as he's getting ready to head towards

the cross in John 1633, on the eve of going to the cross, he,

he's talking to his disciples, He's trying to prepare them in

the upper room and he says to them, you will have trouble or

depending on your scripture, you will have suffering in this

world. You'll have times where life

falls to pieces. So if your peace feels shattered

today, if you're in that spot where you feel like the world is

falling to pieces around you, it's not necessarily the case

that you have fallen out of peace and favor with God.

It just means that you are a human being living in a broken

world, and that is the nature and state of things living in

this time of tension, in this time of Advent.

So you can be godly and still be confused.

You you can be faithful, still feel afraid.

You can love God and still struggle to understand what in

the world he's up to. You can be righteous and you can

still have your peace shaken. You still feel like your world

has fallen to pieces around you. Next verse says, but after he

had considered these things and I just imagine here this this

idea of Joseph gets the news and I don't know what type of time

period he is sitting there wrestling dealing with this

stuff, but he's sitting there and he's you can tell he's

trying to it says he's trying to he's a righteous man.

He doesn't want to disgrace Mary.

So how do I do this? How do I love God and how do I

love Mary? Well, right, He's wrestling

through all these emotions. Then an Angel of the Lord

appeared to him in a dream saying Joseph son of David,

Don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife because what has been

conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She's going to give birth to a son and you are to name him

Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.

And here's what I want you to see from Joseph's story.

When the world feels like it's falling to pieces, peace is

found when we let God's words speak louder than our emotions

just got all sorts of emotions going on.

But into those emotions, God speaks and he, he says a few

things. I want you to hear the word that

the Angel brings to Joseph because I think there's some

words in here that may be very helpful to your heart this

morning. I know they've been helpful to

my heart this week. First, the first thing we see is

this. God knew Joseph.

Look how the Angel addresses him, bringing a word from God.

Joseph, son of David, he knows him by name.

He knows his story, right? He knows his lineage.

He knows where where Joseph has come from.

And God knows you. He knows your name.

He knows your story as you're here today, or maybe you're

watching online or listening later.

He knows where you're coming from.

He knows what's gone on in your past.

He knows what's brought you to this moment.

It's it's not a generic knowledge that God has of

Joseph. It's a personal knowledge.

It's a it's a deep knowledge. And so just know right now.

God knows the situation that you're in.

And then second thing we see is he knew what he was feeling,

right? What does he say to him?

Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid.

It's, it's not command as much as it is an invitation because

he can't command Joseph's feelings to cease.

It's, it's an invitation to, instead of being wrapped up in

his feelings to change his focus, right?

We get so overwhelmed in the moment we come into these spaces

where our world is falling to pieces that we, all of us, we

just get tunnel vision and it's all we can see.

And this is an invitation by God to just, hey, you're not alone

in this. I know about it and I'm here.

You don't have to be afraid. I'll be with you.

This is about how you make decisions moving forward.

It's about not letting that moment, that situation that

you're in be so overwhelming to you that it clouds all of your

decision making moving forward. And then third, God invites

Joseph into what God is doing, he says.

You shall call his name Jesus. That's the may seem kind of just

innocuous to us, but what he's actually doing in this moment is

he's giving Joseph naming rights.

That means that he is giving Joseph adoption rights.

This Jesus, this is going to be Joseph's responsibility and

privilege to be the father of here on earth.

He's saying, Joseph, I'm working out a plan and I'm inviting you

into my plan to be a part of it. And then the fourth thing is he,

he opens his eyes to the scale of the plan that he's working

out, right? He says he will save his people

from their since he's in Joseph, Joseph, Joseph, I know you're

caught up in this unplanned pregnancy right now.

I get it. It's, it's all you can think.

It's the only way that you can see this.

But this is so much bigger than that.

So often when we have lost our peace as Christians, it's

because we lose the bigger picture of all that God is doing

and has done. And it's this invitation from

God for Joseph to step back from his situation and recognize

God's working up something so much bigger than he can imagine

right in in this world, right in this waiting for hope world that

we talked about last week. I think we so often lose our

peace because we lose our hope. We we lose sight of the fact

that we have hope and the confusion of our circumstances.

It crowds out the peace of God in our lives.

It crowds out the promises that Pastor Keith was talking to us

about. I love the fact that we just

walked through that first song that we sang and talked about

those promises. They are truths of Scripture.

And in case Joseph isn't getting it, in case we don't get it,

Matthew is now going to take a little just kind of step over to

the side to show exactly that this has been part of the plan

all along with God, right in verse 22, he says all of this.

It took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through

the prophet Isaiah 700 years before.

See, the version will become pregnant and give birth to a son

and they will name him Emmanuel, which is translated God with us.

He's saying listen, listen, 707 hundred years before this

moment, this moment was already set in stone.

I love this. I love this truth.

Do you know what it means? It means long before Joseph had

a problem, God had a promise. And that's true for us.

Those promises in God's word, some of them are thousands, 3000

plus years old, but they're as true.

Today is the day that they were written down, they far out date

and they will far outlast your current problem.

This is where peace comes from. Not in your ability currently to

manage your circumstances, not in your ability to control the

outcomes. It's not in your ability to be

able to hold everything together when everything feels like it's

falling apart. It's not in your ability to be

able to come up with a plan to sort out every possible

circumstance, right? Some of you are planners or

you're over planners. Try and come up with all of the

potentialities and figure them all out.

That's not where peace is going to come from.

It comes from knowing that God is in control even when your

real world feels like it's out of control.

It comes from knowing that He is true to His promises no matter

what the world throws at you. It's knowing that God knows you,

that He loves you, that He hasn't forgotten you, that I'll

never forsake you. That's where peace comes from.

That that's why it's so critical.

That's why we're going to harp on this over and over and over

again. It's so critical that you know

God's Word, that you're in God's Word, that you're taking in

these promises, that you're memorizing these truths because

rooting yourself in this is what allows you to hear His word over

your emotions. That's why it's critical to

Createspace to be present in, in in corporate worship here, God's

word, yes, but also in your daily life to to createspace to

open God's word and let it speak into your life.

So this is now the 5th decade in life that I have got to

experience on this planet. And I will just say, if I was

ranking decades, the twenty 20s is the worst absolutely out of

the five decades. And man, and I were talking

about this, in case you're wondering, the 90s was the best,

but the twenty 20s is the worst. And so I live in this same world

as you. I live in this world as a dad

who's trying to figure out how to raise and and raise up three

teenage kids. I live in this world as a

husband to a wife who she would never, ever, ever talk about

this or tell you this, but deals daily with chronic disease.

I, I, I don't have any more idea where the economy is going,

where the stock market is going, where the global affairs of this

world are going than you do. In fact, if you've got a good

tip, I'd love to hear it. There are times where I wake up

and I read the news and I can feel anxiety start to creep into

my heart, but I read these words that God said to Joseph and I

know that these words are words for all of God's people.

Don't be afraid. Jesus has come.

The Holy Spirit's with you and Jesus is coming again.

And if you can know those three things with certainty, don't be

afraid. Don't be afraid.

See, when you already know the end of the story.

Story never gets that scary, does it?

When you are certain. Michael Caine used to talk about

the fact I'm going to have to censor this.

He would read, he would decide whether he's going to be in a

movie. He would read the script and see

if he was there at the beginning and if he was still there at the

end, and if he was still there at the end, he'd do the movie,

right? The great truth for you if

you're a Christian is the Bible says if you're in Christ, you're

there at the end. You don't have anything to be

afraid of. There may be a whole bunch of

things that come up and get stirred up in the middle of that

story, but you know how the story ends.

That gives you a lot of peace in all of those uncertain chapters.

I think more than we need people who will solve our problems, we

will. We need people who are going to

assure us of God's promises if we're going to have peace.

Joseph is not going to get answers to all of his questions

here. What he got was a promise, and

that promise was enough to give him the peace that he needed to

walk forward. Look at what happens next.

When Joseph woke up, he did as the Lord's Angel had commanded

him. He married her but did not have

sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son and he

named him. Jesus says Joseph woke up and he

does exactly what God had told him to do.

He moves forward, but he does so without certainty of how this is

going to go for him. You didn't get any of the

answers about what this was going to mean for his reputation

sorted out or Mary's reputation. He's got no clarity about what

the future is going to hold for this child.

He doesn't have a guarantee of how the people around him are

going to respond to his decision making.

None of that. All those things that would have

been working up, all of the fear, none of that gets solved.

It doesn't get a resolution here, but what he has now is he

has faith and confidence in what God has told him to do, and he

has faith and confidence in the God who has told him to do it.

And so he walks in obedience. He walks in quiet, costly,

courageous obedience. He marries.

He marries Mary, he provides for her, he protects her, he raises

up Jesus as his own son. Jesus will be known as Jesus,

son of Joseph. Isn't he that guy who was the

son of the Carpenter? That's how he's going to be

known. He obeys not because he's got

all the answers to his questions, but because he trusts

the one who has made a promise to him.

When your world is falling to pieces, peace comes through

trusting God. Peace comes through obeying God.

Peace comes through doing what God has asked you to do.

We we think that peace is going to be found in US controlling

our circumstances. It's not because you can't

control your circumstances. You never will.

That's a fool's game. We have a world full of people

who are building audiences right now by promising certainty.

If anyone is out there that you're following that tells you

they know the problem and they've got all the answers and

solutions to fix all your problems, they are selling you a

bag of goods, right? If you, if you hear a politician

get up there and talk about how their party policies and

platforms are going to fix everything, that's broken.

Nonsense, absolute nonsense. They don't have that type of

ability and control. Religious leaders who promise us

with certainty if you do blank God will do this nonsense,

right? That is not the way that God

operates. There are lots of people in this

world who promise to fix your circumstances if you will just

follow them, if you will just trust them, if you'll just do

what they say. And it's super enticing in a

time like this where everything feels so certain to listen to

somebody who's speaking with boldness and confidence to tell

you just do A and you'll get B. But it doesn't happen that way.

It might work for a season, but it's only for a season.

And a lot of these people, what's interesting about them is

they'll use tactics to rob you of your piece, to make you put

their faith, your faith in them. They'll, they'll, they'll try

and stir up anxiety, they'll try and stir up rage.

The people who are trying to get you all fearful and trying to

get you all angry, they're not doing so to the goodness of

their heart. They're doing so for their

purposes. But God sends Jesus with a

promise, not that he's going to fix our current circumstances,

not that once you trust in Jesus everything is great, but that he

will be with you through all those circumstances and that he

will secure your eternal reality.

See, Jesus came to bring peace to a world that's fallen to

pieces. Let me read the rest of John

1633 for you. It starts out this way.

Jesus says I have told you these things so that in me you may

have peace, you will have suffering in this world.

I'm not going to fix it all. Trusting me, believing in me is

not going to make it so that in this world everything goes

swimmingly for you. But then he says this, be

courageous because I've conquered the world.

I know how your story ends, and I've assured it.

All of the problems in this world at their core are rooted

in one single problem, sin. When sin came into the world, it

shattered peace. It shattered the Hebrew word of

peace, Shalom, which means everything just as it was meant

to be, right? Sin comes into the world, and in

Genesis chapter 3, it all falls apart real quickly.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

The world falls to pieces. Peace between people is broken.

Adam and Eve are no longer at peace with one another.

They feel shame with one another.

They're pointing fingers at one another.

Peace between US and creation is part of the curse that gets

brought about. We live in a broken world where

the natural world leads the heartache and suffering in a way

that it was never intended to. And most significantly, and at

the core of all, this peace between us and our Creator, us

and the God who brings life has been shattered.

And into this, this sin, sin brings fear and sin brings death

and sin brings us into a world shattered into pieces.

But Jesus comes to take those pieces and put them back

together. He comes to bring us peace.

He comes to bring us to a place of peace.

That's the promise that Joseph was given, that she will give

birth to a son and you're to name him Jesus because he will

save his people from their sins. That's why he's the Prince of

Peace. He came to save us from our

sins. He came us to save us from the

devastation to peace that flows from sin.

So peace starts by trusting that Jesus came to bring us into

peace with God. If you want to know where the

very foundation point of peace is, no peace is really on offer

until we are brought into peace with God through Jesus Christ.

That's what he came to do. He came, He was born, He lived,

and He died on the cross for our sins as the perfect atonement so

that we could be brought back into peace with God.

He paid the penalty for the sin that Adam and all of us who are

descendants of Adam own and have since that day that sin entered

the world. And he takes that on himself and

pays the penalty of death so that we could enter into life

and peace with God. And if you don't know Jesus, my

invitation to you today would be to place your faith in the One

who came to bring you peace with God, because that's where peace

starts. But what about those of us who

have been following Jesus for a long time and are struggling

with peace today? How do you rest in that type of

peace? The type of peace that we have

already had, provided and purchased for?

See, the peace is already there through Jesus.

The peace already exists, but some of us aren't experienced

it. So how do we get to a place of

experiencing it? First, let me encourage you to

do this. Name where your peace has been

shattered. See, trusting God starts with

acknowledging the thing that has shattered your peace.

Worry and peace are incompatible.

What is it that has you worried and anxious in your soul?

Name it, the Bible tells us we can cast all our cares on Him

because He cares for us. Take that to the Lord.

Second, listen to what God says, not just what you feel.

Again, I just want to encourage you.

Some of you would be so your your day would be so much more

peaceful if instead of scrolling social media or opening up the

news or turning on the television, you opened up the

word of God and allowed him to speak words of peace to you

instead of going to places that want to rob you of your peace.

So open scripture, slow down. Listen, if you're worried about

God's provision, here's a great passage for you to go to.

Go to Matthew chapter 6, verses 25 to 33, and keep going to it

Matthew 6:25–33

until the Lord begins to take that thing that you know as you

read it and it is in your head and begins to settle deep into

your heart. If you're worried about the

future, the next verse in that passage is great, Matthew 634.

Don't worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry

about itself. Each day has enough troubles of

its own, or as your mother or grandmother used to say, don't

borrow trouble from tomorrow. The third is this.

Trust God enough to take that next step?

Some of you right now God has shown up to you.

He's telling you what you need to do.

He's telling you that what the next step of obedience is.

And you wish that He would tell you 5 steps ahead.

You're sitting there and you're like God.

The next step is great, but could I see the whole plan

before I decide to take this step?

But that's not the way God operates.

You take the next step, Joseph, he says, take Mary as your wife

and name the baby Jesus. That's what Joseph gets.

God, how am I going to deal with all the no, just just do what

I'm asking you to do. Take Mary as your wife, name the

baby Jesus. Do the thing that God has asked

you to do instead of worrying about the 10 questions that God

hasn't given you answers to yet. Peace often arrives when we take

that one step of obedience and then four, expect that God will

keep His word, that the promises that God makes to you are yes

and Amen forever. He is faithful to His promises

always, even when we struggle to believe it.

Like, I don't know when God's going to bring peace to your

circumstances that you're in right now.

I don't even know the circumstances that you're facing

right now, but I know that He can bring peace to your heart

regardless of your circumstances.

The peace God offers is not a peace that comes from having

everything under control. It's a peace that comes from

knowing that God is the one who is in control over all things.

And the very best thing that we could do together collectively

church this morning is to come to the communion table and

remember that the peace that we really long for in our hearts

and in our circumstances and when our world is falling apart

right now has been secured for us.

It is true. And just as we begin to take

this, I just want to remind people the elements that we take

the bread and the cup. These are elements for those of

us who have already said we believe.

I believe that Jesus body was broken for me, that his blood

was poured out on the cross for me.

If that's you today, I would encourage you.

Maybe today was even the first day that you placed your faith

in Christ. That's fine.

Join with us for the very first time and take communion.

But if you're not there yet, that's fine.

Don't feel any pressure to have to participate in this.

This is something that we take as an acknowledgement that yes,

this is true. For me, it's a reminder to our

hearts to say, yes, this is truth.

If you haven't received a cup yet, we've got some people

around you. Just put your hand up and

they'll come and they'll bring you one.

Just say to you this as we get ready to take it.

If peace is found in certainty, and in this certainty in

particular, then no matter how much uncertainty is swirling

around you, you can know peace. First Corinthians 1123 to 26.

Apostle Paul writes to the church in Corinth.

He says, For I have received from the Lord what I also passed

on to you. On the night when he was

betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given

thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for

you. Do this in remembrance of me.

And in the same way he also took the cup.

And after supper he said, This cup is the new covenant in my

blood. Do this as often as you drink it

in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this

bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until

he comes. These elements remind us that

while life may be uncertain, our salvation is not.

Life may be incredibly uncertain for you, but if you're in Jesus,

you can be certain of a few things.

You can be certain that the body of Christ was broken for you.

And if you can be certain that there is a God who would step

down out of the glories and majesty of heaven, out of the

perfection of that place, and enter into all of the brokenness

of this world for you, that He would go to the cross for you,

then you can be certain no matter what your circumstances

are right now, that He loves you, that He so deeply loves

you. The blood of Christ.

If you believe that Jesus blood was poured out for your sins on

the cross, it means that you are reconciled to God.

And if Jesus sin is enough to wash away all our sins, if Jesus

death, if his blood can just wash away everything, then you

are held fast. You're never forsaken.

You never have to live in shame. You're never beyond God's mercy

and grace. And when we eat and when we

drink, Paul says we don't just proclaim his death, but we also

proclaim his return. We proclaim his death until he

comes again, when His peace will reign fully, where there will be

no more brokenness, where all things will be restored and made

right and somehow even more beautiful than they would have

been if nothing was ever broken in the first place.

I don't know what you're going through.

I don't know what you're struggling with today.

I know what's robbing you of your peace.

But if you belong to Jesus, whatever that thing is is far

too small to separate you from him.

It's far too small to keep you away from His love, and it's far

too petty for you to allow it to rob you of the peace that He

purchased for you on the cross. So let's take these elements as

a confession of these truths. Let me pray over the wafer and

then we'll take it together. Father, Father, thank you for

the bread. Thank you for your body broken

for us. Thank You for this fixed and

certain reality that we can look to is an absolute declaration of

Your love for us. God, some of us right now, our

circumstances are screaming so loudly, but help us to hear your

word that promises us that Christ's body was broken for us,

that we are loved, that we're accepted, that He paid the

fullness of the penalty for our sin.

That if we're going through something right now, we belong

to You. It is not punishment, it's not

discipline. Christ took all the punishment

on his body. We may be disciplined in this

moment. We may have have strayed off

course. You may be using some things to

lovingly correct us, but you will not punishment punish us

because Christ has take the punishment for us.

Father, thank you for this true and certain promise.

Let's take an eat. Let's pray over the cup, Father.

Thank you for the cup. Thank you for the New Covenant,

which supersedes the Old Covenant, what we were incapable

of doing, of keeping all the laws Christ did on our behalf.

Thank you for Christ's perfection applied to us.

Thank you for Christ's forgiveness poured out by his

blood on the cross. Thank you that we get to come to

you right now without fear, with no shame, that if we're in

Christ, we have been reconciled to you.

We've been named sons and daughters of the King.

That all of the promises, all of the good things, all of the

blessings that were due Jesus have been offered to us as Co

heirs with him. God, that includes the promise

that you are going to come again, that Christ will come

again, that all things will be renewed and restored.

And so, God, in the midst of the circumstances that feels so

uncertain and chaotic for us, God, would you give us a real

sense of peace that washes over us knowing that we know how the

story ends and it's certain. Let's take and let's drink.

Let the worship team lead us in one more song of worship

together.