Breadcrumbs show the way

Well, good morning. My name is Cor. I'm on the pastoral staff here at Hope, and if you're new, I'd love to meet you after the service.

I'd love to just hear more about you. Before we go any further, though, I feel like I just need to say, skull.

Way too many haughty 2-0 Packer fans.

No pack no wow i wear i wear this purple polo twice a year in honor the vikings and pastel colored easter eggs that's uh that's what i represent this morning um we uh over the course of the next two weeks between services want to invite all of you to participate in a community art project, art at hope some of you artists you feel overlooked too many engineers in the crowd We are going to be putting paintbrush to canvas. Is that what we do?

And this is part of our God is Moving campaign. If you remember last year, we did kind of come down, grab a carpet tile, scroll on the back, and then we glued your carpet tile to the floor.

This is just another way to just collectively remind ourselves we're part of a church that's doing a God is Moving campaign so that we can have projectors.

Can you tell the difference? This was like, I wish we had planned this.

It was just like, we ran out of time. I'm like, no, this is perfect.

This is, in a nutshell, what we're trying to do with our God is Moving campaign. To go from this to this.

And that takes $1 million.

So, just trying to update everything to this century.

Okay, let me pray. And then we're going to open up God's word and see what he has for us this morning.

God, right now, I'm cognizant of the different people that come into this room.

We're at different places in our faith journey.

We're at different places as far as our upbringing. We're at different places in how we view the world.

Many of us are in different places in how we think we should be called to live in this moment in time.

And so, Lord, rather than a pastor sharing his opinions, may all of us,

God, right now seek to come underneath your word and your gospel.

Holy Spirit, will you come and speak to hard hearts?

All of us need a reminder and a refresher of your goodness and your grace.

So soften hearts, open ears, and let us all, God, hear from you that we might walk in your ways, walk in light of your gospel, live in light of what you have done for the sake of your church, that we might trust in you, God.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

So, a quick little Hansel and Gretel metaphor for us this morning.

I want to use a well-used trope of breadcrumbs to frame out today's message.

I want to leave on the cutting room floor so much of this story.

If you know this story, friends, it is horrible.

The fact that you're not aghast, that I would actually use it as a metaphor shows you might not know the full details of this story.

This is like a stepmom.

No offense to you that are stepmoms. This is not a talk about stepmoms.

It's about the stepmom says, hey, you know, husband, we need to get rid of these kids.

And so essentially, father, take them out in the middle of nowhere and leave them.

And it's like, what? And so Hansel's like, he overheard something.

He's like, not going to happen. I'm smarter than you. And so he's going to lay some shiny rocks so that they can find their way back to the house. And it works.

Then it's going to happen again. And this time, stepmom locks the door so that he can't go get shiny rocks.

His idea is, I'll just leave a trail of breadcrumbs.

Not knowing that animals, birds, are going to swoop in and eat the breadcrumbs and they're going to lose their way.

And in that, they find this enchanted house with a wicked witch, and in that, there's all sorts of shenanigans that we don't have time to go into, but essentially, the wicked witch is out to do those two no good, and it ends with them defeating the wicked witch and.

Finding their way back to the house some other way, I guess.

That, like, that's not what I expected. That's not the nursery rhyme, cute, feel-good story of dad just kind of abandoning kids in the woods and them eventually coming back, and then they have this happy reunion.

I'm like, I'd have some words with dad. Like, what up, dad?

But, so I want to leave all that and just grab onto the breadcrumbs.

The breadcrumbs trope. Is that, can we do that now that I've shared all this horrific side information about this?

So trail of breadcrumbs is going to be our metaphor.

And if we can understand the trope, if we can understand this well-used literary device, we can understand God's word.

I want to make sure that we understand that God's word is clear and sufficient and accessible for you and for me.

Are there things that we might read in the Bible that we don't understand? Yeah.

Might it prove difficult and we might want to spend the rest of our lives looking into the Bible, looking into things? Yeah.

But yet, friends, it's not so beyond us that we can't just follow these breadcrumbs that will lead us to God, lead us back to our heart's true home, lead us to the source of hope and joy in life.

And so that's what I want to have us consider this morning. a quote to along those lines, get us started here.

It says this from David Garland's commentary, only the reader has this information, these breadcrumbs, so to speak, which is vital for evaluating Jesus' identity.

The point of these opening scenes is therefore to let the reader know from the start who Jesus is and to stress that he comes to fulfill divine promises and his divine commission.

And as Mark puts these breadcrumbs down one by one, and as we go to pick up one, we'll look up and see he's already laid five more breadcrumbs.

He does not wait for us to examine these breadcrumbs.

He is just onto the next thing, onto the next thing, onto the next thing.

Now, if you're reading, he is trying to get you somewhere fast.

He's trying to get you to that point in Mark's gospel of like, who do you say that I am? Like that's, that,

Yes. It's so important that it comes with noise. Who do you say that I am?

That's where we're going. And it's breakneck speed for eight chapters.

And then the rest of the book fills that out about what it means.

What our response to that question of who do you say that I am?

What does that mean? What consequence does it have? But he goes at breakneck speed.

What are we doing? We're going after the gospel of Mark this fall.

We could, because of that quickness to get to chapter eight, we could preach all eight chapters on a Sunday, but we're not.

We're going to take the fall and next spring to slow it down, examine some breadcrumbs. It's okay.

But as Davis got us started last week, the question, who is Jesus, is right.

It's just throughout this book, it's just facing the reader at every turn.

Who is Jesus? And then ultimately, like I said, who do you say that Jesus is?

That's where it's not just this abstract, philosophical, theological, who is Jesus?

It's not giving Jesus to kind of these different cultural stereotypes like Davis unpacked for us last week.

Ultimately, this question of who is Jesus becomes who do you say that Jesus is?

And that's where it hits home at the heart, hits home personally in our faith for you and for me.

We will use this slide to help orient us to all of the Bible, but so many of the things that come before the Gospels come before our New Testament.

The first three quarters of your Bible, some 750, 800 pages of your Bible is Old Testament.

And there are promises and allusions to a coming Messiah. Messiah means anointed one.

I always thought Christ, which means anointed one, was Jesus' last name.

I thought it was like Jesus, first name, Christ, last name. No, that just means Jesus, the anointed one.

They have, if you see Jesus the Christ or Jesus Christ, they are making a claim that he is the anointed one.

He is the fulfillment of those promises in the Old Testament.

And then our New Testament so often reflects back. It reflects back on Jesus in his life and death.

And this idea of a Messiah, an anointed one, a coming one, we get to look at in further detail.

So today, just five verses. We're going to look at it, and you'd be surprised how many breadcrumbs Mark can spread in just these five verses.

So let me read for us, and then we'll spend some time digesting.

Ooh, that wasn't planned. That's not in the notes. Digesting breadcrumbs.

Some of you didn't even pick it up. You're still a little sleepy, stayed up late for the gopher game. It wasn't worth it. All right, here we go.

In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the spirit descending on him like a dove.

And a voice came from heaven. You are my beloved son.

With you, I am well pleased.

The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

And he was in the wilderness 40 days, being tempted by Satan.

And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.

So that is our passage for this morning.

Three stops on this journey today. Breadcrumbs of humanity, breadcrumbs of divinity, and then where does this trail of breadcrumbs lead?

Breadcrumbs of humanity, of divinity, where they, you're smiling, you know, is that a good breakdown? Is that good? Is that all right?

All right, all right. This is me. This is not AI.

This is tough work over the course of the last week for me.

All right, breadcrumbs of humanity. One verse, we get breadcrumbs of humanity.

In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John the Jordan. You might be thinking, breadcrumbs of humanity, where?

Where exactly are you looking? So let's take some time to look at three breadcrumbs.

I think I could go for five, but we're just going to try to tackle three this morning, okay?

Just three breadcrumbs. First one, in those days, Jesus came from Nazareth.

Nazareth is highlighted. Now, why might that be consequential?

Why might that speak to Jesus' humanity?

I think that's a worthwhile question to ask. Two comments on that.

One is just the commentary of one of Jesus' own followers, one of his own disciples.

If you remember a different account, it says this, Philip found Nathanael and said to him, We found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote,

Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

Essentially, he's saying, we think we found Messiah. We think we found the anointed one.

And what's his response? joy, excitement, just bounding out of bed and following after Jesus.

No, he says, can anything good come from Nazareth?

Just so we're clear, like Nazareth is not where Messiah is expected to come.

That's not where we expect this great victory, this great anointing of God to come out of.

It's looked down upon. It's like, actually, can anything good come from there?

Additionally, look what it says here from Donald English. He says this, it's not that it was a particularly wicked place.

It was simply unheard of, never mentioned in the Old Testament, nor in those other Jewish sources where you might expect to read about the Messiah's home.

We have to try to imagine the shock of this on first century hearers of the gospel.

Jesus is from Nazareth. Big deal. Nothing good.

Can anything good come from that place?

This is a way of saying earthly origin.

Seeming of no great consequence Really just A person From a town That maybe you've not heard of.

Humanity.

Second one, Galilee. This is a picture of the Sea of Galilee.

Another breadcrumb of his humanity. How so?

I want to quote from David Garland again.

He says, Jesus appeared as unpowerful as a powerful one could get.

One might also assume that the Messiah, the Son of God, would cut a more imposing figure who would immediately capture the attention of the crowds.

Instead, this Messiah, the one who comes from nowheresville and rustic galley seems indistinguishable from the rest of the crowds.

He does not come with some special aura or halo, right?

So many of the pictures of Jesus that we look up on Google has that little aura, that little halo, right? It's like, that one's Jesus.

He's got the special circle behind his head, right?

Like scripture goes to great lengths to say common, ordinary, right?

Some of you looked at that picture of Jesus and you're like, he's not as handsome as Jonathan Rumi who plays Jesus in The Chosen, right? Like, right.

This guy would just fit in, fall in, not be exceptional in such a way that he would stand out from the crowd.

Even Jonathan Rumi is like, I think he's too tall to play Jesus.

He like stands above everybody else, right? Like going to great lengths, just this nowheresville, common earthly Jewish man, his humanity being depicted there.

And then the final one, the final one, I did get a picture. This is not AI.

This was an actual picture of Jesus at his baptism.

I always imagine John the Baptist in the water with him, not on a rock.

I baptized last week. I was in the water, not on a rock. Maybe I need to get myself a rock.

Why would this speak of Jesus' humanity? I think we have a theological problem with Jesus getting baptized. Why?

Why is that a problem? Because baptism at this time and John going around baptizing and saying, I bring forth a baptism of repentance, which is a fancy way of saying of turning away, turning around, turning away from sin.

And so it's like, why would Jesus undergo that ritual?

Why would Jesus undergo a baptism that symbolizes repentance?

Don't we believe that he's sinless? Don't we believe that he's perfect?

Yes, we believe he's sinless.

We believe he's perfect. is why would he undergo this rite, this ritual?

And this is for sure where commentators spill the most ink on our passage for this morning.

Let me just give you two, two that I find compelling and speak to his humanity.

Number one, to demonstrate that he is one of us, not above us.

But one with us, alongside us. There is solidarity with sinners in undergoing this right, this ritual, even though he is without sin.

So there's a certain solidarity, unity, peace just with other human beings, with humanity.

Secondly, and this comes from one of the other gospel accounts, this is so that he might fulfill all righteousness.

In that account, John the Baptist is approached by Jesus.

And John the Baptist is like, no, I like baptizing everybody that I can, but Jesus, no, I know there's something different about you.

You're not getting baptized. And Jesus is like, no, no, no, no.

This is to fill all manner of righteousness.

There's something about Jesus putting himself under the law, under the religious requirements and kind of doing and going forth through these experiences, just like God's people of the Old Testament were called to go through these experiences, and yet Jesus will go through them perfectly, righteously.

That he actually will be that true Israel, a true and better Adam, a true and better Moses, where all of them faltered and all of them failed.

Jesus is going to come through these same rituals and fulfill all righteousness.

Breadcrumbs of his humanity. The fact that he is just from an actual town, in an actual region, undergoing human rights and ceremonies.

This screams, this speaks to us of his humanity.

Breadcrumbs leading us to conclude what Mark wants to lead us, which is he's a guy.

He's a human. He's a dude.

Real flesh and blood, just like you and me.

Secondly, there are breadcrumbs of divinity in our passage for today.

It says, when he came up out of the water, immediately, which Mark loves all the time, he's just going immediate, immediate, immediate, 41 times, he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.

And a voice came from heaven. You are my beloved son. With you, I am well pleased.

Because I went with three for humanity. I seemed right to do three for his divinity here.

I want to look at the Jordan River. I want to look at the heavens being torn open and this dove in tandem with some words here.

So three breadcrumbs that lead to us concluding that there is divinity in Jesus.

About the Jordan River, it says, David Garland says this.

The Jordan River was evocative. When I read the Jordan, did any of you think, man, that's evocative?

Ah, we need help sometimes, right? The Jordan River was evocative.

It was more than simply a river to Jews. It represented the border between the wilderness and the promised land.

When John refers to a more powerful one who is coming, his audience would naturally understand it to refer to God. God, since God is the mighty one in the Old Testament who comes in judgment and pours out the Spirit.

So there is intentionality. I know sometimes with certain details, they'll get lost on us just because we're not clued in to think the Jordan River is evocative.

It's consequential. It's significant.

It separates wilderness from promised land, just like we separate Wisconsin from Minnesota with an important river. It's evocative to have that river flow between.

So in that, we need to realize that when John the Baptist says, somebody's coming behind me, that's more powerful.

And you and I go, oh, there's that Jesus figure.

The original audience would be like, God's about to show up. God's coming.

And for this to happen in that river, that spot between wilderness and promised land, that is consequential.

It's not just Jesus identifying with humanity or with the nation of Israel.

He's now identified with a consequential event in which God's power was displayed.

So then you and I should be like, oh, maybe something is going to happen.

And then it's confirmed when the heavens are torn open. Don't exactly know what that is like.

This is the best Google has to offer on heavens being torn open.

Two points of note on this. One is if you were here during the cloud of witnesses, we did that this summer.

One of the witnesses that I grabbed onto was Tornvale. Any of you guys remember that? You were here for that?

Some of you weren't. But essentially, torn veil happens at the moment of Jesus' death, that in the temple, there is a veil that separates kind of common areas and even holy areas from one specific area, the holy of holies.

That is to be symbolic of God's very presence in the holy of holies. Who gets to go in there?

Well, historically, it was the chief priest, and the chief priest could go in there once a year. That's it.

That's all the access that was afforded to go behind that temple veil until

Jesus dies on the cross and the temple veil is torn in two from top to bottom to signify that this is God's action.

This is not man's, this is God doing something significant, that the temple veil is torn from top to bottom, torn in two to provide access, fresh access, new access for the people to come into his presence.

Same word is used here for the heavens being torn open.

There's something of that word that's not used very often to say this is consequential.

This is reality. God is in-breaking.

Something new is about to transpire. This is a divine engagement.

It's as though God the Father and God the Spirit were like, Oh yeah, today's the day.

The ministry of the son is getting kicked off. We need to go join him.

And so the heavens are torn open and we get this image, the presence of the spirit as identified by a dove here descending.

And this is consistent with kind of along par with the words being spoken that this is my beloved son.

In him, I am well pleased. Where do we see those words?

We see them in Psalm 2. We see them repeated in Hebrews chapter 1.

Hebrews 1 · chapter mention

We see them in this context of Psalm 2 as like a coronation psalm in which the king is going to kind of be enthroned.

In Hebrews, it's utilized to show Jesus' superiority to every other created being.

He's superior to Moses, Melchizedek, the high priest, angels.

He is superior to all of them.

And so the supremacy of Jesus...

The fact that he's being installed as a king, but not just a king, a messianic royal king in the line of David, that he truly is that anointed one, that Messiah, that expected one, the coming one.

And so there are breadcrumbs of divinity sprinkled just even in those couple verses.

So where do these breadcrumbs lead? I think it's fascinating to just do a quick compare and contrast.

Nazareth, of no great consequence. Not even mentioned in our Old Testament.

But yet, this baptism happens in the Jordan. Evocative. Place of huge significance.

That some event would bring forth a new deliverance. A new rescue.

A new bringing out of the wilderness into the promised land.

That Galilee, referred to as kind of nowheresville.

Yet the heavens are torn open.

To greet this moment of Jesus and then kind of a baptism of carried out by the hands of man, the hands of John the Baptist.

And yet not without divine appointment, not without God's spirit and God, the father making this grand declaration.

This is my son in who I'm and well pleased.

Where do the breadcrumbs lead to his humanity and his divinity?

In 2007, Steve Jobs stood on a stage and introduced the world to an Apple product.

He didn't start there. He built up to it.

He was so excited to share with the crowd of tech gurus, those who were excited to be there, gather for this grand announcement.

He was excited to share that Apple was bringing forth three different technological devices for their benefit.

And he went off about all the gidgets and visual appeal of the iPod and this kind of state-of-the-art phone and this internet communication device.

And he kind of goes off about each of those. And he keeps speaking of them independently.

And then the big twist is like, I'm not talking about three devices.

I'm talking about one iPhone and the crowd erupts. You know, this is what made for exciting, thrilling things back in 2007.

For us, it's just kind of normal, right? At this point. But in somewhat similar fashion.

In Mark's gospel, he has given us breadcrumbs of just Jesus as a human.

Of Jesus as God.

And there might be just this temptation, just kind of like, okay, so that's two beings? Are we talking about two individuals?

And it took church history, years, decades and decades of years to figure out we're not talking about two individuals, we're talking about one individual.

And that's where we get this theological doctrine of the incarnation, that we talk about at Christmas, that Jesus is fully God, fully man.

Not two, but one. That's a historical understanding.

This is what one theologian says.

This is a really staggering Christian claim that Jesus of Nazareth, human, just this guy from Nazareth, just from that old town that doesn't have any consequence, was God made man.

That he took humanity without loss of deity.

So that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as he was human.

It's here in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie.

The word, the divine word, the second person of the tree, God, the son was made flesh. God became man.

And this is one of those doctrines that we have to have as foundational remaining what he was, God. He became what he wasn't, man.

Yet we worship him as one, not distinctly two, but one, Jesus the Christ.

Where does that lead us to our final set of verses here? Let me read for us and then we'll spend some time, I think, I want to challenge us to reflect on what these might mean for us in our cultural moment.

So the spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness. What's happened?

Jesus, the man, Jesus, God, right? We got this incarnation, this idea that he is one.

He's driven out into the wilderness and he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals and the angels were ministering to him. Not going to spend time on that last sentence.

So much speculation. Are the wild animals good or bad?

Did Jesus snap his fingers and they were all lying in peace and attending to him like the angels?

Or are they beastly and operational in the work of Satan?

Don't know. Not sure. Neither are they sure, but they wrote a book, so they have to say something about it.

But I think where I'm going to put my chips in is that this is a way of saying in all of heaven and earth,

I'll mix the angels and the animals to some of the highest, most glorious things, kind of these angelic beings that are there just tending to God at all times, worshiping him to just average, ordinary, beastly people.

Those who are for him, those who are against, I think just in all kind of every, in every situation and circumstances is how I'm going to take that. Okay.

The spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

And he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan.

That second line there, in the wilderness for 40 days, ties him to Moses, ties him to parts of Adam's story, parts of Elijah's story.

And I went down that rabbit trail so far and it was so fun.

And I can't share any of it, Rob, with you due to time. But the 40 days, 40 is significant within God's story.

And I think it's a way of Mark saying, tie Jesus back to those figures.

He is the true and better Moses. He is the true and better Elijah.

He is the true and better one of those other accounts.

And in this, he's driven into the wilderness and he's tempted by Satan.

The spirit immediately drives him out into the wilderness. There's a way of dispelling this idea of like, did Jesus get lost?

Did he make a wrong turn? No, this is a part of God's plan because most people would have saw that baptism that got really excited. He's going to go into Jerusalem.

He's going to go into the promised land. He's going to bring his victory.

And so this would have surprised like, oh, you're choosing to go back through the wilderness.

Choosing to be tempted by Satan.

That's probably not how those watching would have written the story.

They would have expected something different.

So what are we to make of this? I know what Matthew and Luke make of this.

You can go read their accounts about this.

They share just kind of this blow by blow, like Satan tempts them with this, and then Jesus responds with that, And then Satan brings this verse and Jesus counters him with the right hook.

And you got kind of this account and there Matthew and Luke are like, no, Jesus won the argument.

We see none of that in Mark's gospel. Isn't that intriguing? It's just fascinating.

Like this is all we get is like, there's a battle happening.

And then Jesus is going to like show up preaching next week in the verse there.

Like, what do we make of this? And I think this is where we're going to start to bleed into how we might think about these things and apply these things in our lives, in our hearts.

Consider Garland again. He says this, according to Mark's gospel,

Jesus does not order Satan to leave.

And the devil does not run off, tail between his legs.

This could signify that the desert sojourn is only the first round in Jesus' struggle with evil.

The battle is not over. The decisive victory is yet to come.

The confrontation with the foremost of the demonic forces will therefore extend throughout his ministry.

And I love that as a concluding remark as to why didn't Mark, like Matthew and Luke, make clear that Jesus wins?

It's as though Mark's like, no, no, no, that's not the victory I want to highlight.

We'll get to the decisive victory at the cross later. But for right now,

I just need you to know that everywhere Jesus goes, wilderness or otherwise, there's spiritual battle, there's spiritual forces, there's enemies, dark forces that are going to confront him in his earthly ministry.

And ultimately seek to take his life.

That's not just true of Jesus. That's true of you and me. This world is a wilderness.

You and I are in that wilderness called life right now.

As soon as you come to faith in Jesus Christ, You're not instantaneously transported from this world to the next, from this broken world into perfect glory.

That's not, we're in this intermediate stage. We have faith in Jesus.

We have faith in his decisive victory at the cross. And yet we're not home.

We're not in glory.

We're still here. And this could signify to you and to me that Satan still wants to mess with us.

With temptations, with trials, with testing, even though the decisive victory of the cross has been achieved, we're still here in the wilderness, in this fallen world, this broken world, this conflicted world.

I don't think I have to convince any of you of that reality.

If I were to dedicate one slide to the realities of this week, what would I want you to hear?

There's no doubt in my mind that you have heard a lot this week.

What would I, as a pastor over Hope Downtown, what would I want those who call

Hope their home, where this is your faith, what would I want you to hear?

How would I want you to be discipled, to be catechized?

Catechism, old school church where you're just practices and learning about the faith and ingraining those into heart and mind.

What would I want you to hear in one slide?

It's a principle that I feel like was lost.

And I'm not thinking of anybody specifically within this body.

But as I saw the public discourse, I feel like there's a principle that was lost.

That's one of the most important for Christians regarding unity within the body of Christ and prophetic voice outside of our walls.

What is this principle? The principle is differentiating timely from timeless.

Timely from timeless.

I saw so many people rush into the public space in order to put out a timely message.

And in that, I have no desire to differentiate one from another, no desire to push on this political ideology or push back on that belief system.

But I want to call us as Hope Downtown.

I want to call us maybe away from the fray, that we might be a people who's quick to listen and slow to speak, that we wouldn't feel this cultural compulsion to get there first, to say it loudest.

But we actually might draw from a timeless faith.

That you and I have something that we believe to be timeless.

You know what that means? Timeless.

As important to share today as last week.

Important today as to preach next week.

Throughout history, around the globe, that what I preached this morning about the divinity and humanity of Jesus, that he is the incarnation, that he is God with us, is a timeless message that is intelligible in the West as it is the Far East, as it is in Africa, as it is in Europe.

We want the Middle East to hear about God with us through Christ in faith.

That ultimately our timeless message is there for every peak and valley, every season, in response to every cultural event.

When God says in his word, there's nothing new under the sun.

Details change, circumstances change, and yet the events of this last week,

There's nothing new under the sun.

And we get to be a people who draw on a timeless faith, a timeless gospel, that this actually for the Christian is our way to make it through times.

This is our response to time and timely.

It's not actually picking up the different words, ideologies, soundbites.

Is Christ our hope and stay through thick and thin, through up and down, through times of discord and unity?

Are we grabbing onto that timeless gospel? That's our hope. We say it's our hope.

Is it our hope downtown? The timeless truth and gospel of Jesus Christ for life, for goodness, for justice, for joy, amidst anxious times.

That is our most timely word.

And so many of the words that happen in our culture have a short expiration date.

They're not timeless. At least, not according to the standards of the Bible regarding timelessness.

Only our gospel.

About such things. Peter Bolt says this, Jesus calls his followers to reject all the things that bring security and identity to normal human life so that they might find their security and identity and following him wherever he may lead.

Insofar as they have heeded this call, they demonstrate the life of faith.

Is that your hope? Is that your boast?

Is the timeless gospel sufficient to meet the demands of this hour and our current cultural moment?

I believe it is.

And it's why at Hope Downtown, what are we about as a community?

Unburdening ordinary people by pointing each other to an extraordinary Savior.

Are we all walking in here this morning burdened? I believe we are.

What do I want to do? I want to point you to Jesus. I want to point you to Jesus.

I want to point you to Jesus.

Throughout time and space around the world, I want to point you to Jesus.

It is timeless. And I think it is timely, friends. looking to Jesus, trusting in Jesus.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the manna, fed the Israelites in the Old Testament, that Jesus led his disciples to pray, give us this day our daily bread, that we will come and take communion, which is bread.

It's not just these bread crumbs lead to life, friends.

The bread is life. It is Jesus for us as the bread of life, spiritual life, spiritual renewal, able to satisfy, timeless and timely.

Again and again and again, we point one another to him.

Jeremy did so last Sunday out at a lake in South Minneapolis, kind of fluorescent-y green lake.

If you were there, you know what I'm talking about. Jeremy shared a little bit of his story.

Consider these words. He says, hi, everybody. My name's Jeremy.

I've been coming to Hope for about seven years now, originally from Vietnam, actually, and I was adopted.

And it's funny, growing up, I never really thought anything about being adopted except for the fact that my brother is 6'2 and white.

And I always thought maybe if I kept eating, I'll get like him. I was very wrong.

But listen to this. But one of the cool things about adoption is that it's being selected, not because of anything that I've done, or any merit that I have, but by the innate love of the selector.

And I've had the unique experience of knowing that through my parents, but also being adopted into the family of Christ and the family of hope.

So I'm excelebrated to sight and to be with you all today.

Do you hear that? Innate love of the selector.

Nothing that i've done or any merit that i have and then we got a picture of his baptism here.

That's actually the moment uh in which he's symbolizing his union with jesus in his death but then raised up out of the water friends to new life right celebrating.

The father speaking of the son, the father speaking of Jeremy, you are my beloved.

In you, I am well pleased. Because you did stuff? No.

No merit of his own, just the love of God.

Friends, that's our timeless and timely message.

The love of God exhibited through

Christ, experienced by his spirit and in relationship to the church.

I hope we never tire of that message.

I want to invite the worship team forward we're going to close with a couple songs of worship through song like I mentioned we're going to take communion the cracker represents Jesus' body broken for you and the cup represents his blood shed for you, if you'd like to be prayed for we'll have people available if you want to give financially there's a box in the back or you can go do that online but as we close with these two songs and as we reflect on God's word for us this morning the timeless gospel, the love that God has for you. You are his beloved.

If Christ wanted to abandon you, he would have on the cross, but he did.

He demonstrated the full love of God by going to the cross for us.

And so wherever you're at in your life, as you're experiencing the wilderness, how does it change things to know that Jesus isn't just showing you the way via breadcrumbs.

He actually himself is the way. He is God with us, friends.

That's our hope. That's our boast. That's our worship. That's our prayer this morning. Let me pray for us.

Jesus, thank you for being the bread of life, not just leading the way, but being our way.

God, if we can understand breadcrumbs feeding us, nourishing us guiding us, being our hope and rock and stay.