The Heart of Christianity - Galatians 2:14-21 (Oct, 20th, 2024) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Father, we are amazed at what we've just witnessed, God.

Truly the living example of everything that we have just sung, Lord, that we are free.

God, that we were enslaved to our sinful desires, to believing, Lord, that life could be found outside of you.

But God, you have done a work.

You are so gracious and you are so merciful to do that work in us by faith.

And declare to us, Lord, that life and freedom is found in Jesus Christ and in Him alone.

God, you want to continue to declare that to us.

You love us.

You even gave your own son for us.

So, Lord, you have us here for an incredible reason, for a purposeful reason, God, to hear of what we just sang about, of the freedom that there is from the tyranny of life, Lord, from the despair, the loneliness we often feel, the hopelessness.

God, you set us free through Jesus Christ.

So, God, we pray that you would help us to hear you, God.

We believe that this is a moment that you have prepared for us before the foundation of the world, and we walk into it, Lord, asking that we would not be distracted by anything, but would hear your voice.

God, speak, oh Lord.

We pray this all in the name of your Son.

Amen.

Amen.

You can grab a seat.

And as you do, you can grab your copy of God's word and open it up to Galatians chapter 2.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

And if you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand and the ushers will get one into your hands, which you can keep as a gift.

Such an awesome morning to celebrate what the Lord has done in these people's lives and our lives.

And as we continue to worship the Lord by sitting under his word, I want to ask you a simple yet profoundly important question.

The question is this: what is the heart of Christianity?

Take the gravy of Christianity, the Thanksgiving gravy of Christianity, boil it all down, and what do you find there is the substance of Christianity?

Well, the Bible has a clear answer.

And the answer is that the heart of Christianity is the gospel.

It's the good news.

It's what we've just seen on display in baptism that through faith we can be united to Christ in his death and his resurrection to new life, that we can be raised to new life, freed from our slavery to sin.

This is the heart of Christianity.

This is what separates Christianity from every other worldview and every other religion.

It is at its very core the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And yet, as simple as that answer may seem, as many of hundreds of times as you have heard the gospel may be spoken about, maybe preached about, the answer to comes to us as a challenge.

The reason for that is because in many ways the gospel is slippery.

And when I was a child, we played a game, we played a lot of games that were pretty messed up, and as I tell you about, you kind of realize you know why I am the way that I am.

A lot of concussions and injuries.

This game you played in the water and you took a ball, you covered the ball in Vaseline.

And the game worked a lot like football, but believe it or not, you probably do believe it, there's a lot more concussions.

And you would try to get your ball to your side, and there'd be a lot of fighting, a lot of grappling, and it presented an incredibly challenging problem that it's hard to hold on to a ball that is covered in Vaseline.

In very many ways, as we read through the New Testament, what we find is that the gospel is this simple thing to grasp, but it is this hard thing to hold.

Now, the reason for that is not because the gospel itself is slippery, but because our hearts are slippery.

So a condition then of our human existence is that we will hear good news, even the best news in the world, and we may allow it to shoot out of our grasp because that very thing we're hearing about is slippery, and we might find ourselves holding on to something entirely different.

Now, maybe right now you're saying, well, that's certainly not a problem for me.

Well, I maybe want to correct you because as we come to Galatians chapter 2, verse 14 to 21, what we find is that one of the most crucial apostles in the founding of the church struggled with this as well.

Galatians 2:14–21

So what's happening in Galatians chapter 2 is Paul is confronting Peter and the other Jewish leaders, and he says in verse 14 that it is because their conduct, the way that they are living, is out of step with the truth of the gospel.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

Now, this is should be astounding to us because this is only 15 years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And Peter was the one whom Jesus locked eyes with, and he said, Hey Peter, I'm gonna build my church on you.

And so if there was anyone who understood the foundation, it was Peter, and if that wasn't enough for Jesus to lock eyes and say, Hey, Peter, you're kind of the main one here, well then a few days later, Peter then witnessed the death of Jesus, and then he witnessed the miraculous resurrection of Jesus.

And over the past 15 years, he's been seeing the revival as thousands upon thousands of skeptical Jews and Gentiles who had nothing to do with Jesus are turning to the Lord and giving their life to Jesus Christ.

Peter had seen it, he had been in it, and yet here we find him 15 years later, and he's misplaced the gospel.

He's relying on his own works rather than the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

What does this tell us?

Well, if it was true of Peter, if you and I are humble enough to accept it, it will be true of us.

That the gospel is slippery.

And this has a profound effect on us.

Maybe that means that you have been watching Christianity from the outside, but because the gospel is slippery to hold on to, you have mistook something other than the gospel for the very heart of Christianity.

You know, it's kind of like this.

Imagine that you said you you want it, you know, I want to be a surgeon, but then one day you decide, you know, I don't really want to be a surgeon.

All that surgeons do is wear scrubs.

That's all that they really, that's the heart of being a surgeon.

Well, you can think about that and think, well, that's not, I mean, I you you know that surgeons do that.

Certainly they wear scrubs, but there's other professions that wear scrubs, and when you boil down what being a surgeon is all about, it is certainly hopefully about more than just wearing scrubs.

You've viewed the thing from the outside, but you haven't understood it at its very core, at its very heart.

It also reminds us that maturity in the faith is not about moving beyond the gospel.

Maturity in the faith is about recognizing how easy it is to lose sight of the gospel.

So then working diligently to ground your life in every area in the gospel.

That means that you and I, we need to constantly get back to the gospel.

We can never move on from the gospel because it is slippery.

And this morning, as God leads us back to the waters of life, I'm incredibly expectant.

I'm incredibly expectant, and I hope that you are too, that this is not just a time that you are here to sort of listen to some random guy speak for a little bit, but that this is an ordained time, that God has you here for a reason, and he wants to speak life through his word to you.

And so we turn to his word now.

Would you read this with me?

Galatians chapter 2, verse 14 to 21.

Galatians 2:14–21

Paul says, When I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas, that is Peter, before them all, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.

Yet we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified.

By faith in Christ and not by works of the law.

Because by the works of the law, no one will be justified.

But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin?

Certainly not.

For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor.

For through the law, I died to the law, so that I might live to God.

I've been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

I do not nullify the grace of God.

For if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

The gospel's slippery.

We lose the heart of Christianity easily.

And what God is doing this morning through Paul is calling us back to the heart of Christianity.

Well, how does he do it?

Well, the first thing God wants us to understand is this that we all want righteousness.

We all want righteousness.

Notice that when Paul goes to address the behavior of Peter and these Jewish men, he does not talk about the behavior.

I do that all the time, you know.

As I address problems in my house, you know what the thing I say the most in my house is?

I mean, I'm sure the parents are with me.

Stop it.

Stop it.

I feel like that's you could probably summarize parenting.

But my documentary about me as a parent probably is called Stop It.

Stop that.

Stop this.

Stop that.

We address the behavior, but Paul here doesn't address behavior.

Notice that he addresses desires.

Specifically, he addresses their desire for righteousness.

Well, you say, where is that?

Look at verse 14 to 17 with me, and I want you to notice an important word there.

The word is justified.

Four times it comes up in those short verses, and you'll notice if you have an ESV Bible in the footnote, you go down to the bottom there, and it has a little helpful definition of justification for you.

That means counted righteous.

Paul's looking at Peter's condition, and he's looking at our condition, and he's teaching us this principle that the reason we lose the heart of Christianity is because you and I, everyone in this room, has a desire for righteousness.

Now, even as I say that, I'm sure that there are many of you who are, you know, arguing with me, and probably in your own head winning the argument, because we never lose an argument in our own head, right?

You're arguing with me, like I listen, I don't care about righteousness.

And the reason that you are saying that is because the English definition of righteousness, can I just say this?

It really sucks.

It's not great.

When you and I think of righteousness, what do we think of?

Probably most of us think of our grandma.

We think of our grandpa.

They were really good people, they were righteous, and so we have this sort of understanding of righteousness as a moral term.

It's sort of synonymous with good.

To be righteous is to be just a good person.

It's in the moral realm.

That means that especially if you're put off by Christianity this morning and we talk about righteousness, you then view it as sort of this oppressive system of rules and regulations.

In that case, it's even worse because righteousness is just sort of this rigid system that's imposed upon you.

There's no rhyme or reason as to why the rules are rules, it's just rules.

So that Christianity is constantly labeled as a sort of stickler or religion.

We don't want you to have fun.

I want you to understand, though, that that is not how the Bible views righteousness.

In fact, the word righteousness, all throughout the Bible, all that it means is right relationship.

In the Bible, righteousness often has very little to do with rules, though sometimes it does, and it has everything to do with being in a right relationship with someone or something.

You and I know what it's like to be in a right relationship.

We pay our electricity bills, and we have a relationship with the electricity company.

It feels pretty oppressive at times, doesn't it?

But we know how it works.

You pay your bills, and in return, when you flick on the lights, you have electricity.

You fail to pay the bills, you fail to uphold your end of the relationship, and you won't.

You won't be in right relationship with the electrical company, and so they'll shut off the power.

We know how this works in friendship too, don't we?

If you want to have a friend, you need to be in right relationship and know what friends do.

That means there's a certain trustworthiness that you need to have.

The foundation and soil that friendship can grow in.

There's a certain care you need to express, the support that you show your friends.

All that to say, right relationship requires something of you.

And what Paul is saying then here is that to be human is to crave relationship.

We need it.

We need it.

We seek as human beings.

It is our natural tendency to seek right relationship with someone, with something, or with some God.

Amber and I have a show that we love to watch.

The show is called Alone.

Alone is a reality show where they grab ten of the most isolated, awkward people in the world.

I don't know how they find them.

These people have kind of grown up in the forest as survivalists.

They know how to live in the wilderness.

And they take these people and they drop them off in the middle of the Arctic.

They only get to bring 10 things with them, and whoever can survive the longest wins like a million dollars or something.

And it's incredible because you see these people who like they are a different breed.

They were made for this show.

They were raised, they're kind of feral.

They were raised in the forest.

And they go on the show, and at the beginning, you know, there's kind of like this, oh, this is gonna be so easy.

This is my life.

I survive in the wilderness.

I know how to do that.

But then you take them away from things and you take them away from people for a few days, and all of a sudden the tone changes.

They start to think, you know, actually, I really love and miss my mom.

You start to realize that to be human is to need and crave relationship so that even the people who win, the reason that they're able to stay out there is because they want a right relationship with the people, their family at home.

They want to be able to provide them material things, and it's the power of even relationship that can cause them to stay out in the wilderness in the pitch black and the cold.

All this to say, as humans, we crave, we long for relationship.

Now, if you and I are really honest this morning, and this requires a great deal of intellectual honesty, we can step back from our life right now and ask this question: what relationship am I trying to make right?

What thing is it?

What person is it?

What pursuit is it that I am pouring all my effort into thinking that if I just have this relationship right, I'll be complete.

That life will have order, that I will find happiness.

It's reality for us all.

All of us are seeking a right relationship with something or someone, and all of us are following a certain certain set of religious practices and rules to get that thing.

Think about it for a moment.

Why won't some of you look in the mirror?

It's because you crave this right relationship with your body and with your appearance, and it's painful to look in the mirror because when you look in the mirror, you see that you're not like you want to be, that there's a lot of work to be done, that you there's a certain diet to be followed.

If you want to fit the sort of cultural stereotype of beauty, you've got a lot of things to change.

And look in the mirror is this sort of horrific reminder that you aren't what you want to be.

You want a right relationship with your body, you want a right relationship with your image, but it kills you not to have it.

Why are some young women willing to sleep with all sorts of different men?

In many ways, it's because you want a right relationship, and so you're willing to give yourselves sexually to other people so that they in return can give you this feeling of beauty, this feeling of significance, this feeling of worth.

And in return, many guys are willing to look past the beauty of a woman for who she is as a person and treat them as an object because they're in the pursuit of a right relationship with sexual pleasure.

Why are some of us killing ourselves at work?

Isn't it because we're in this pursuit of a right relationship with work where we feel if we just work hard enough, we'll find validation, we'll we'll find a sense of worth through our achievements.

We believe that if we just keep climbing the corporate ladder or hit that next milestone, then we'll be successful.

Then we'll be fulfilled.

And yet, if you can again, just with some intellectual honesty, take a step back from your life and look back, isn't it?

Doesn't it seem like every promotion you've got, every achievement you've got, the sense of fulfillment just seems a bit out of reach.

It seems elusive.

So we keep fighting for this right relationship.

Let's keep thinking about this for a moment.

Why is it so crushing for I mean, this week for me?

Why is it so crushing sometimes to realize that people don't think about you as highly as you want them to think about you?

It's because of our sense of worth is tied to other people's perceptions, and so we work for a right relationship with people, and when we've put in all the work, it's really painful when we don't get the reward.

When we have this sort of deep-seated need for other people's approval and validation, and we don't have that, it hurts.

It's crippling at times.

Now, these are all examples of ways that we might seek righteousness from things or from people, but that's not to say that some of us might be here this morning seeking a righteousness from God but going about it the wrong way.

That's exactly what Paul is pointing at the Jews and saying that you're doing.

They're saying, listen, you want to have a right relationship with God, but instead of approaching him with a heart of faith, you're relying on your own efforts.

You're relying on the things that you've done, you're relying on these past works that you've accomplished.

Instead of relying on faith.

This is what separates Christianity from every other religion.

It is the gospel.

That Christianity is not just a different sort of package of rules and religious ceremonies and actions to be performed.

At its very hard, Christianity is about faith, about the gospel.

Now we could go on, but I want you to see the common thread here.

The common thread in our pursuit of relationships is this that the longing for right relationships, it drives each of us.

Can we, with intellectual honesty, just take a step back and say, no matter what your worldview is this morning, that is the very thing that drives you to actions.

But that there is great pain experienced when we rely on these external values.

Whether it's from body image or from romantic connections or from professional success, whatever it is, when we're relying on these external validations, we often just end up feeling more empty and more unfulfilled.

We're looking for something else.

Which leads to our next point.

Next thing I want you to see is this righteousness is costly.

We all want right relationship.

But the thing that the gospel reminds us is that having a right relationship is always costly.

It always comes at a cost.

Look what Paul says with me in verse 19.

Paul says, For through the law, I died to the law.

What a fascinating statement.

Through the law, I died to the law.

Paul looks at us this morning and he finds sympathy with our pursuit of righteousness.

Well, that's because we all long for righteousness.

So of course, if Paul were to say everyone but me, that would be intellectually dishonest.

But Paul can look at his own life and say this listen, I used to pursue a right relationship with God through the law.

But this was the problem that the righteousness that you seek outside of Christ is costly.

And so he looks at his life and he says, This trying to find a right relationship, it nearly killed me.

I mean, we just heard the testimony recently of Brandon who was trying to find a right relationship in this world, but all that he could find every corner he turned was depression and sadness and loneliness, and that's all that we've ever find.

But some of us are just a bit more like a terrier, you know.

Just nothing can depress us.

We're always hopping up.

Well, maybe if I just get another promotion, then I'll find joy.

Maybe not a terrier, a golden retriever.

Is that better?

We're always happy.

Tails are always wagging.

Maybe just around this next corner.

It takes a lot of intellectual honesty to do what Paul did.

Step back and say, this was this is killing me.

Couldn't find it.

In fact, isn't that every testimony this morning?

All these different paths, all these different pursuits, and everyone got to a dead end where they just saw this is costing me too much and not giving me enough in return.

The effort's not worth the reward.

You ever find something too costly?

I just had this actually.

I was at the uh mall and I'm looking for a fall coat.

I haven't found one yet, so if it's cold, you'll see me out there shivering.

And I saw one that looked great, and it was a store I'd never been in before, so I lifted up the tag and I was shocked.

It was four digits.

And I said, I don't know what technology they're putting into coats these days, but I'll just freeze.

I'm happy just to freeze.

And I immediately walked out of the store.

It's too costly.

Problem is, until you know the cost, you will sort of dream and fantasize what life would be like in this coat.

I was doing that.

I was like, you know, if I wear this coat and preach, there's gonna be thousands of people saved, probably, you know.

Sort of fantasize, oh, what if I get this thing, what's it gonna be like?

And I joke, and yet, you know, there's an element of truth in that to all of our pursuits that we fantasize a life with just having the right relationship with this thing.

Paul wants us here to take a step back from our pursuit of a right relationship, to lift up the price tag and ask this question what is this costing me?

And to recognize that this pursuit of a right relationship, it's not just costing you time.

It's not just costing you money.

What Paul wants to recog you to recognize is that it is costing your life.

It's slowly killing you.

And it keeps asking for more until you have nothing left.

Until Paul says, through the law I died to the law.

So you need to realize that the very thing you believe will make you ultimately happy is actually the thing that will squeeze you until you have nothing left to give, and it will ultimately kill you.

There's a story in Greek mythology that illustrates this, I think, really well.

A story of a young man named Icarus.

And he's the son of a master craftsman whose name is Daedalus.

They're both imprisoned, but Daedalus is a master craftsman, and so he crafts for Icarus this set of wings so that Icarus can fly out of the prison and bring himself and his father to salvation.

And it works.

For a time it gets them out, but as they're flying, Daedalus says to Icarus, hey, listen, you need to be careful.

As they're flying out of this prison, he says this to them, Icarus, I built these wings out of wax and feathers.

So that if you fly too low to the water, well, your wings will get wet and you won't be able to fly, and you'll plunge into the water and drown.

And if you fly too high in the sky, you'll get too close to the sun, and the sun will melt the wax and you'll plunge into the water and drown.

And eventually, Icarus, and he's enjoying the pursuit of flying, he flies too close to the sun, and this is where we get the saying from you flew too close to the sun.

You and I are made in the same way.

Isn't it true that right now you are having this internal wrestling match?

If you've with intellectual honesty stepped back and see saw the thing that you are pursuing a right relationship with, you are having this sort of intellectual wrestling match right now where you say, Yeah, but I can't live without the thing.

You don't understand.

If I don't have this thing, then I have nothing.

And the gospel comes in and says, That's true.

If you fly too low to the water, you can't live.

The only option there is annihilism.

The only option there is suicide.

Where you say, There's nothing in this world for me.

And so then the only option for you to do is to be like Icarus and to fly higher, to keep pursuing a right relationship.

But the problem is that the very thing that is saving you day to day will eventually lead in your eternal death.

It will eventually kill you.

On the one hand, you can't imagine life without it.

On the other hand, the more that you chase it, the more empty you feel.

So you give yourself to the pursuit of a right relationship with your body.

And sure, you can be healthy for a time, but father time is after us all.

And eventually the looks disappear and the body disappears.

And the very thing that you have fought so hard for disappears.

You can find satisfaction in the pursuit of sexual partners, but you eventually discover that they're really not there for you.

They are there to get fulfillment for themselves, and you are an object of their satisfaction.

You can find success at work.

You can work really hard.

You can climb the corporate ladder.

You can make your boss happy.

Some people filled with hope right now.

Amen.

I can make my boss happy.

I didn't know that.

And yet the day you retire, your office will be filled.

You can run on the treadmill of finding other people's approval.

You can get their validation.

But for what?

Only to find that it's fleeting and it's shallow.

And so if with great confidence, and I do believe that the Holy Spirit will give that to those who ask, if you can step back right now and say, this, this, this is all for nothing.

Here's what you'll see.

This painful truth that your righteousness is incredibly costly.

And that in the end, it is not God who killed you through a rigid system of rules and regulations.

It is yourself.

You have pursued this right relationship with this thing that no matter how much you squeezed it, it could never provide enough for you.

And so you just kept squeezing it more.

And one day you will stand before the Lord and you will have to look him face to face and say, God, I just never thought this satisfaction could be found in you.

I always pursued a different way.

And now I recognize with the greatest clarity I've ever had in my entire life that the effort was not worth the reward, that the very thing that I thought was life actually killed me eternally.

That rather than wanting a right relationship with God, that we wanted a right relationship with things, or with people, or with ourselves.

But in the end it killed us.

It's costly.

Paul has good news for us in the midst of this.

There's two ways to die.

And what Paul had to do was to let his pursuit of righteousness outside of Christ give him the final death blow.

Through the law, he says, I died to the law, like Icarus, with wings of wax and feathers.

Paul let himself plunge into the waters of destruction, trusting that there was a savior for him there.

Through the law, he died to the law, but that wasn't all.

And the third thing that I want you to see here is the most important thing that Jesus has paid the cost.

Look at what Paul says here in verse 17.

Sorry, in verse 19.

For through the law, I died to the law.

So that.

So that church.

There is hope here.

This is painful.

This requires a personal death, but there is hope filled in these two words.

Look at these words for me.

See them from God Himself.

So that I might live.

So that I might live to God.

There is a death that you and I can experience in this very moment that if you have the faith to seek it, will lead to life and eternal life at that.

If you have the courage and confidence in God's word, you can be like Paul, you can be like Icarus, who plunged in the water of death and judgment, but came out victorious because you did so with a Savior who was sufficient.

There are two deaths to die.

First time baptism was practiced in the church was at its foundation in Acts 2.

When the Spirit came upon the church, Peter preached a sermon about Jesus at Pentecost, and thousands of Jews responded, what must we do to be saved?

The response then was repent and be baptized.

I want you to understand that for Jewish people, this was terrifying.

They were standing before water.

This was a terrifying reality.

Why?

Because what is water for a Jewish person?

Well, their mind would immediately go to Genesis 1, where the world was a chaos of wavy waters, and it was the spirit who came and hovered over those waters, bringing order to the chaos.

Their mind would go to Egypt to Exodus, where they walked through the walls of water, and as they got to the other side, they looked back to the other side, and the waters of judgment came crashing in on God's enemies, killing everyone.

Not a person was spared.

They thought back to Jonah, who, because of his disobedience, he was cast into the waters as judgment.

What the Jewish people had to do, they fully understood that to climb in the waters was a terrifying reality.

It was to climb in the waters of judgment.

It was synonymous with death.

So that there was a certain terror that filled them as they climbed in the water.

There is the same apprehension here this morning as we kind of walked through the whole process of being baptized.

Brandon looked me in the eyes at the part where I was saying, I'm gonna put you under the water.

And he looked at me and he said, How long do you hold this under there for?

And I told him, This would be an incredibly awkward baptism service if I held you under there for any longer than a second.

This would start to look more like a strangling than a baptism.

And yet there's this reality here that these waters they represent death.

Patrick and Alicia and Brittany and Brandon all stood in these waters as their old selves.

When they were baptized, the Bible says that they were united with Jesus Christ in his death.

They died to themselves to signify a spiritual reality of what has happened to them through salvation, but they did not stay dead.

They were raised to new life with Jesus.

Here is the heart of what Jesus is saying to you in your pursuit of a right relationship.

He's saying this righteousness is costly.

It will inevitably cost you life.

But here's the good news.

I'm willing to give my life as a payment so that you can have the right relationship that you have been looking for this whole entire time.

I love what one person said in their testimony that when I met God, a God-shaped hole was filled in my heart.

And Jesus stands before you today, believer, unbeliever, and he offers you this that you can have in him what you are looking for.

So that Paul writes in Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ.

I have died.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Listen, every other pursuit of righteousness, it makes endless demands on you.

You must keep sacrificing on the altar in order to keep that relationship right.

Only in the gospel does Jesus come and he says, I he says, I want nothing from you but you.

Price has been paid.

You've been redeemed at the cost of Christ's blood.

Prophet Isaiah heard Jesus say these words.

Words that he says to you this morning, come.

Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.

He who has no money, come buy and eat.

Come buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Would you hear Jesus plead with you this morning?

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread?

Why do you labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen diligently to eat what is good and delight yourself in rich food.

That you recognize that Jesus does not speak to you for the sake of condemnation in the moment, in this moment, but for the sake of grace.

To show you that there is something more in this world, to call you to turn away from your fruitless pursuit of right relationships and embrace the righteousness that can be only found in him.

Do you know what Jesus promises?

Eternal life.

Very thing you're looking for.

Who here isn't looking for that time that Jesus that where you can, you know, sit on the dock with the sun shining and say, this is to life.

And yet you'll never find it in this world.

And Jesus came to offer it.

He said, I came that you might have life and life to the fullest.

The very thing you've always been searching for.

Let me plead with you this morning then to take that step.

Even right now, to turn to Jesus, who is present and has been speaking to you through his word, and find the satisfaction that you've been seeking.

Turn to him.

Where your desires are fulfilled not through endless striving, but through Christ, who loved you and gave himself for you.

Could you pray with me?

Father, we long for what we can only find in you.

And God, we have found it this morning in your word.

You always have a word for us, and the word is always grace upon grace.

And there is grace here for us, Lord, if we'll turn to you.

God, it's scary and it requires great confidence.

It requires faith, Lord, to trust that just like you upheld these four people who entered into the waters of baptism, just like you upheld each of us who are your children through faith, God, you will uphold us by faith if we turn to you and die to ourselves in our pursuit of right relationships outside of you.

And say, God, I want to live to you to you.

It happens in this moment by faith.

And so you pray we pray that you would accomplish this.

And we turn to you, Lord, to give you all the praise.

God, you are so worthy.

We sing this song to you.

In the name of your son, amen.