Living in God’s Redemptive Plan

We're in a series right now that we're calling uh cover to cover.

It's a 15-week series we started um in the beginning beginning of the year, two weeks ago.

Um, and it's it's gonna be heavy on the teaching.

So if you're not into that, you're probably not gonna like it.

I I really want to do the best job I can possibly do to set you up for success in feeding yourself and getting into the word yourself into interpreting for you, you know, between you and God, and and uh not just sort of give you uh necessarily something on a Sunday, but to give you something that will last beyond Sunday.

And so throughout the series, uh just really trying to help uh not only uh teach something specific out of the Bible, but show sort of the big picture of the Bible, and and and uh I've been sharing resources with you along the way, so I'm gonna keep doing that.

We um uh one of the things I've been showing you is this study Bible, it's the cultural backgrounds study Bible.

And um this is I've had many study Bibles, it's the best one I've ever had.

And what it does is it does a phenomenal job of closing, helping you close historical distance.

By that I mean, you know, Genesis, where we're gonna look today, was um written, you know, 3,500 years ago, uh, give or take.

But you know, you're talking a long time ago.

So there's a a huge distance historically, and so often we can superimpose our cultural assumptions on the Bible, which would then lead to a misinterpretation.

So this really is gonna just inform you of things that you would have no way of knowing uh unless you had kind of done the study.

So this puts it right in front of you.

Uh, another book I recommended last week, I want to show you again.

This one's called How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth, written by one of the guys that um translated the NIV Bible.

Um, so this is excellent.

This also, again, will help you to uh really understand kind of what you're reading and how to approach the Bible.

And then he wrote a follow-up book that's supposed to be read after, which is how to read the Bible book by book.

Same guy, Gordon Fee and Douglas Stewart.

Um, and it's just excellent.

It's again, if you open up Colossians and you start reading it, um, that you would could read and reference this book uh to help you do that.

But again, it's designed to be read after this one.

So just want to put those in front of you, and then in a few minutes here, I'm gonna share a free resource with you, uh, those you'll have to purchase.

All right, um, okay, we uh we're gonna jump into today.

I want to talk about, I want to answer this question.

What is the meta-narrative of the Bible?

What is the meta-narrative?

Like, what's meta-narrative?

Well, meta-narrative is basically the overarching story of the Bible, right?

The word meta means beyond.

So if you hear meta-physical, it'd be something beyond the physical, right?

So meta-narrative is we have this 66 books of the Bible, and there's a whole bunch of narratives, right?

There are many narratives, but those many narratives fit into a meta-narrative.

And think about like a human being, right?

So when somebody dies, um they write an obituary, and in that obituary you have a paragraph that tells the overarching story of that person's life.

You know, here's who they were, this is when they were born, where they were born, a little bit about their family, maybe a little bit about the things they love, that their education, maybe their contributions to society, to the world around them.

Uh, this is what, you know, some of the high points of their life.

And then the things that they love to do, their interests, their hobbies, their passions.

So it's a one paragraph for a person's life.

I mean, there's no way that's going to cover everything, but it's just giving you kind of the big picture.

In the same way, the the Bible has many, many narratives.

And just like in the human life, um, some of those narratives are extensive, right?

So, like Old Testament Joseph in the book of Genesis.

We have like 13 chapters of this guy's story, but it's even more than that.

We know his, we know who his great-grandfather was, we know who his grandfather was, uh, or great-great-grandparents, we know who his parents were, we know the names of his stepmothers, we know the names of his stepbrothers, and and and we know you know details of of the highs and lows of his life.

And so, just like in your life, you have certain stories in your life or moments in your life and seasons that you know a ton about.

But then there's other, like in narratives in the Bible, where you'll have very brief, like we looked at Acts chapter 8 a few weeks ago, the Ethiopian eunuch.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

We we don't even know the guy's name, we just know he was from modern-day Sudan.

We know a little bit about his career, um, and we know about some of his responsibilities, and then we know about this significant moment in time where his life intersected with a guy named Philip in a significant way.

So, but that we don't have a lot.

That's all we have.

There's another story.

There's in Luke 5, there is a uh a guy who is literally called the paralytic man.

We we don't know his name, we don't know where he's from.

He's just we just know him essentially based on the fact that he was uh paralyzed and he was on a mat.

And then he his friends lower him through the uh roof of a house to see Jesus.

And you know what his friends' names were?

I don't either.

In Luke 5, it literally refers to them as some men.

That's what they're called.

Some men.

So you have a paralytic man and some men lowered in front of Jesus.

Jesus sees them, and it says, seeing their faith, he forgave the man's sins.

What sins?

We don't know.

We don't have the details.

It doesn't say what his sins were, and we don't really know much about what happened after he left.

So, same with you and me.

In our lives, we have some people that come in and out quickly.

We have things that were kind of a just a blip on the radar, it was quick, and then we have things that shape us that were huge.

And then we have things that never resolve.

If you read the book of Judges, the book of Judges doesn't really resolve.

It's a series of stories that go from bad to worse to get to the end, and the last story in Judges is like you're like, should this even be in the Bible?

It's probably like the worst story in the whole Bible.

And then it just sort of falls off a cliff.

Like, you know, it's like it doesn't resolve.

There are stories in your life that don't make sense, it doesn't feel like it belongs, and it doesn't resolve.

I have issues in my life, I have realities in my life that aren't going, they don't resolve.

They never will.

And so, welcome to the human experience.

That's what we have in the Bible.

We're not sugarcoating it, we're looking at it the best we can to get the truth that we can get, and ultimately that revelation of who God is impacts who we are and how we relate, and it changes our lives.

So, this is how we're approaching the Bible.

What is the meta narrative?

So, what is the big story of the Bible?

That's what I want to talk about today.

Um, okay, so great quote, guy named N.

T.

Wright.

He said, the Bible is the story of a good creator longing to put the world back into the good order for which it was designed.

I love that.

I'm gonna say it again.

The Bible is the story of a good creator longing to put the world back into the good order for which it was designed.

I think that's a good sentence to kind of describe the Bible in a sentence.

I I want to uh give you um kind of this meta-narrative, and then we'll we'll kind of talk through each of the elements and unpack them a little bit more.

But I want to show you uh from the beginning of the Bible, like in order for you to understand the Bible in the meta-narrative and the overarching story, it you really have to understand the first three chapters of the of the Bible.

So we're gonna go to Genesis 1 through 3.

And here's the meta-narrative: it's creation, fall, redemption, restoration.

Creation, fall, redemption, restoration.

We're gonna dig into each one of these.

Let's start with creation, the way God intended it.

New life.

All right.

Um, in the center screen, we're gonna kind of populate some ideas that would go with this.

So in creation, um, we have first uh that God creates uh people in the image of God.

He creates a man and woman.

It says in Genesis 1.27, God created human beings in his own image.

In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them.

Uh we have in Genesis 131, we have what we call divine affirmation.

And so it says in verse 31, after God had created everything that he created, he would say it was good.

He created the earth, it was good.

He created the sky and the animals, it was good, it was good, it was good, the trees, it was good, the ecosystem, it was good.

And then he creates man and woman in his image.

It says in verse 27, and in verse 31, it said he saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

So we so from even from uh Adam and Eve's perspective, they have the divine affirmation from God.

They're not wondering what he thinks about them.

They know who they are, they're made in his image, and they know how he feels about them.

They are very good.

Uh next, they have healthy relationship.

Genesis 2, 18.

The Lord God said, It is not good for man to be alone.

Loneliness is not a good thing.

I'll make a helper who is just right, who is suitable for him.

Uh and then in verse uh Genesis 2.23 and 24, Adam catches the spirit of Edda James.

Go ahead and bring it up.

Alas, my love has come alone.

It wasn't that good.

You ain't gotta be nice.

My lonely okay.

Um Adam meets Eve, said this is bone and my bone, flesh to my flesh.

She'll be called woman, for she was taken from man.

This explains why a man leaves his father and mother, is joined to his wife, and look at this.

This is significant.

The two are united as one.

So look at this, look, look at the the Eden, the Garden of Eden starting to shape out.

Made in the image of God, I know who I am.

Divine affirmation, I know how God feels about me.

Healthy relationship, they're united as one.

And then next is meaningful work.

Genesis 2.19.

Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals, all the birds in the sky.

He brought them to the man.

Look at this.

He brought them to the man to see what he would name them.

Think about this.

We talked about this last week.

In the Egyptian mind, again, context, this is being written to the children of Israel at Mount Sinai, a few months out of Egypt.

So they have absolutely been impacted by Egyptian philosophy, cosmology, theology, all of that.

And so he is ultimately one of the ways that they think about existence isn't just things having physical properties, like having atoms, or things having just experiential realities like love.

They thought of existence as something having a function or a role.

So we talked about this last week when God separated the light and the darkness, he named it day, he named it night to give it a function or purpose was part of the existence, not only giving it physical properties, but giving it purpose.

And in giving it purpose, he's bringing it in a sense into existence.

So look what he's doing here.

He's giving meaningful work, he brings the things he brought into existence and gave them physical properties, and he gives man the power to name them, to do, to speak about their function and their role.

And I mean, that's pretty cool.

It says whatever whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.

If you grew up, okay, in the image, you're in the image of your parent.

If you had a good relationship with your parent, you you had probably some kind of version where you're like, hey, I kind of look like this person, you're in their image, and then you start working together, and they teach you a trade, or they teach you a skill, or they teach you how to do something.

And at some point, it's like you watch them and you help them, and then eventually they're like, hey, you, what do you want to do?

You go ahead and well, it's your turn.

And they give you some power and they let you make some decisions.

This is Adam and Eve working with God, and he's giving them the ability to declare the function of the things he created.

It's just awesome, great, meaningful work.

Next is appropriate pleasure.

In Genesis 2 9, it said the Lord God made all kinds of trees to grow out of the ground.

Look at this.

Trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.

So, again, what is he doing?

He's creating beauty, a beautiful world.

These trees that are just nice to look at, and they hit the taste buds a certain kind of way.

And we experience beauty.

I mean, think about just the amazing experience of looking at beauty.

Have you ever been to a place where you know you're looking at a landscape, you're looking at a sunset, you're looking at a mountain range, you're looking at some trees in bloom, whatever, and you're you're so moved, you want to capture it.

And so you take out your phone and you take a picture of it because you want to capture it, you want to show other people, and you want to be able to remember it later.

And you take a picture and then you look at it on your phone and you're like, oh, it doesn't do it justice.

So what do you do?

You take another picture.

Like, surely, if I change the angle, okay, I gotta change this to 0.5, it might do it for me.

And and so, what do you do?

But but that's a longing to be able to experience you, you there's something in you compelled by by by taking in the beauty and in your eye and experiencing that it's right.

And so, in an appropriate way, he says these trees were pleasing to the eye, and it tasted good, it was good for food.

That, yes, we've been given appetites by God, we've been given senses by God, and and and a way in an appropriate way to experience that pleasure.

Okay, the the next thing, self-confidence.

It says in Genesis 2.25 that Adam and Eve were both naked and they felt no shame.

And I think this is about more than just thinking about you know the nudity aspect of it.

This is really about the vulnerability element of it.

They were completely exposed, completely exposed.

There was nothing hidden, and yet they were comfortable in their own skin.

They didn't think twice about it, they weren't worried about being criticized, they weren't worried about being exploited, they weren't worried about being taken advantage of.

They felt good about who they were to the place that they're that self-confidence led to the fact that they weren't self-conscious.

Don't even have to think about it, and so they felt no shame.

So if you think about in narrative, think about the uh aspect of um conflict, right?

Think of the three kinds of conflict and narratives.

You have man versus nature, man versus man, and man versus self, right?

In Genesis 1 and 2, we see that man is at peace with all three of these.

At peace with nature, at peace with the world around him, at peace with God, at peace with himself, and at peace with Eve and uh in his relationship.

And so this is what we would call a state of a word that's used 250 times in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, the word shalom.

Okay, it shows up in the book of Genesis, chapter 15, for the first time, but it's used 250 times shalom.

Genesis 15 · chapter mention

Shalom has a range of meaning.

Go ahead and bring up the definition.

Shalom is peace, prosperity, completeness, fulfillment, safety, uh, satisfaction, and contentment.

So look at this.

Look at this, look at this life.

I'm made in the image of God.

I know who I am.

I have the divine affirmation.

I'm not wondering what God thinks about me.

I'm in healthy relationship with other people.

I'm in doing work that's making a difference.

I'm I'm appropriately empowered in my work and I see how it matters.

Appropriate pleasure.

I'm experiencing pleasure in the way that it's supposed to, not overblowing my appetites, not slave to my appetites, but tasting what I'm supposed to taste and seeing what I'm supposed to see, and then self-confident, I'm comfortable in my own skin.

So it's in this state of shalom and peace that you would that is what N.T.

Wright talks about, the good order for which it was designed.

Of course, we have the next thing, which is the fall, right?

The fall.

So at some point, the free will of human beings made it so that even though they were in a state of shalom, they wanted more.

It's not enough.

It's not enough.

I I need more.

And in the uh creation narrative, God sets up a in the Garden of Eden, he sets up the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

He says, you can eat of every single tree, everything you see, except this one.

Don't eat of this one.

If you do this, you're you'll surely die.

And so uh in Genesis 3, 1 through 10, we have the fall.

And so it says in Genesis 3.1, you know, that the serpent, the adversary, comes and begins to poison the mind of Eve.

And so he comes to Eve and says, you know, what's up with God?

You know, why what he says, did God really say in verse 1, did God really say you must not eat of the tree, of any tree in the garden?

And Eve's like, no.

But what does he do?

He gets it on the record, you know, he starts to put something in her mind, he starts to make her question God.

Starts to starts with an attempt at deception.

Did God really say this?

She's like, well, no, he didn't say we couldn't eat of any tree, but there is this one tree that we're not supposed to eat of.

And he said, if we do, we'll surely die.

And it says in verse 4, you'll not certainly die.

The serpent says to the woman, for God knows when you eat from it, your eyes will be open, and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil.

Verse 6, when the woman saw the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye.

Hmm.

Interesting.

Interesting.

Verse 6, good for food and pleasing to the eye.

Does that ding ding ding?

Ring a bell.

Remember that?

Remember that?

It said in Genesis 2 9, God had already done that.

God had given them all these trees that were pleasing to the eye.

All these trees.

There was no deficit.

They weren't lacking, but there's something about humans and flesh and free will that even though I have trees that are pleasing to the eye, and I've got good things on my taste, but I just want more and I want different and I want that one.

And so God had already given them what they needed.

And so, and then it says, and also desirable for gaining wisdom.

And this is this really now starts to give us a picture, a real clear picture of the temptation that comes to our flesh.

Because what do we have with flesh?

Go ahead and bring this up.

You think about the fall, you have free will.

And with free will, you have flesh and you have appetites and you have cravings.

But the flesh, my humanity, is prone to being deceived, prone to being confused.

There are sometimes I did things I knew were wrong, but I did it anyway.

And there are sometimes times that I'm weak in my flesh and you're short-sighted and you make impulsive decisions.

But then sometimes you think you're gaining something, okay?

You like it's not a bad desire to want to gain wisdom.

She thought she was going to gain wisdom, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he said, don't take of this fruit.

So instead of having the shalom that God had offered her, she decides, I'm going to take wisdom my way.

Instead of trusting God, walking in obedience, something catches her eye, and now, even a good desire like wisdom, you go about it the wrong way, all right, and you end up walking in disobedience.

You end up complicating your life.

And so she wants to gain wisdom.

She took and ate it, and also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it, and then their eyes were open, both of them were open, and they realized they were naked.

Now all of a sudden, I am aware of my vulnerability, I am aware of my exposure, and now I become self-conscious.

So they showed, sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

All right, why did these guys fall?

Why did they sin?

Why do humans sin?

Is it because we're just rotten?

Is it because we're bad?

No, Genesis 1 says we're made in the image of God.

Is it because we're just, you know, terrible people?

No, we're declared good.

Why do we sin?

We sin because we have flesh and free will.

And in your free will, sometimes we're short-sighted, sometimes we're impulsive, sometimes we do things that are selfish to satisfy ourselves.

And often, I mean, we have all lived this.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Every one of us did something we knew was wrong, but we had no idea what it would cost us.

You thought you were going to get away with it, you thought you could sweep it under the rug, you thought it would be your little secret, you thought nobody'd be hurt by it, and yet you found out it took you further than you wanted to go, it keeps you, it kept you longer than you wanted to be there.

It was not worth the price that you had to pay.

And so throughout life we do this and we find ourselves now caught up in guilt, caught up in shame.

We've caused pain to ourselves, we've caused pain to other people.

So now Adam and Eve are throwing one another under the bus.

I don't think I can trust him, I don't think I can trust her.

They start to try to cover themselves up, and now this shalom that is the way God intended it, and our relationship to him and each other and the world around us has been disrupted, and now it's every man and woman for themselves.

And now we're in combat, now we're in conflict, and and so then.

Again, now we have suffering and pain, right?

Sin enters the world.

It's a chain reaction.

You hurt me, I hurt you.

You lie to me, I lie to you.

You break my trust.

Why would I want to keep your trust?

You did it first.

You were first.

You hurt my kid, I'll hurt your kid.

And it just creates this chain reaction of sin in the world.

And so we have creation, we have the fall and all of this.

And then the next is then we have redemption.

Go to redemption, redemption, grace, forgiveness, and patience.

Okay, think about this now.

God said, if you eat of this tree, if you take, if you think you know better than God, knowledge of good and evil, you're gonna be like him.

You're gonna take it for yourself instead of living the way he intended, you're gonna do it your way.

Okay, you'll he says, you'll surely what?

You'll surely die.

So they eat the fruit and then they drop dead.

My bad.

They eat the fruit and then God killed them right then and there.

No.

They eat the fruit, and there were some things that died, their innocence died, their security died, their opportunity in the garden died, because when you sin, sometimes you lose relationships, and when you sin, sometimes you lose opportunities.

So they there were some things that died, but did they did God kill them?

No.

In fact, it says in Genesis 3.21, the Lord gave, made garments of skin.

In other words, he killed an animal on their behalf.

He didn't kill them, he killed for them, and ultimately covered their shame, made garments for them, and and he clothed them.

When I say grace, most people think cross.

But grace didn't start on the cross.

Grace started in the garden.

It started all the way back in Genesis 3, when they sinned and the wages of sin is dead.

He should have died right there, but he said, You know what?

I'm gonna spare you.

You're gonna lose this opportunity, but I'm gonna open up new life and a new door.

In fact, if you go to Genesis 4, they start having a family, right?

They go to a new place and something new begins, and they begin having children, and they begin having a family.

So right there we see grace, we see forgiveness, and we see the amazing patience of God.

And then the last is restoration.

Okay, it says in again, Genesis 3.23, so God banished them from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which they've been taken.

So they lost an opportunity, but you see that Adam and Eve continue to live and continue to have opportunity.

When I say restoration, um, sometimes that can throw us off because you think of something being restored, it's like you get it back.

And sometimes that's the case.

There are certain things that are resurrected, or there are times that you lost something and through the process of repentance and forgiveness and grace, you end up getting back what you lost.

But there are some times that you lost something and you have to bury it there.

But the fact that God will bring new life and new opportunity, you see that theme throughout the Bible.

So when I say restoration, don't think that necessarily means I'm going to get back the garden specifically that I lost the way that I had it.

It's going to go back to the way it used to be.

Actually, what it really is, is that it takes faith to walk into Genesis 4, into a new place I've not been, into a new opportunity.

So God brings new life.

God brings new opportunity.

We see this in the story of Job who lost everything, and at the end, he gets a he has a new opportunity.

And so, what do we do throughout life when we walk through this process of going from peace to our flesh, learning to manage our appetites and to manage our flesh, the process of repentance and redemption and grace and forgiveness, it gets to that bottom word down there, which is ultimately wisdom.

That we learn how to make better decisions throughout life and we learn to quickly run to God and not away from him and avoiding him and hiding from him.

We learn that he's faithful to forgive and that he's full of grace.

Okay, so this is the this this whole thing starts in the garden.

What you're gonna find throughout the story of the Bible is you're gonna see this concept happen over and over again.

So pretty quickly, we're gonna start next week looking from Adam to Abraham, but you're gonna see that in Genesis, you're gonna see the beginnings of a nation.

That it will say in Genesis that because of the chain reaction of sin, that the world was so lawless and the world was so broken that it said pretty much all people did was think about sin all the time.

Because all of this people were hurting one another and trying to get even with one another, and so it became a very painful place to be.

And so God says, you know what?

I want to I want to bless the world through a nation, and so it's through Abraham, and we'll get into that more next week.

The nation then begins and they have no king.

It's the period of the judges.

So one of the nice things, by the way, about the study Bible, even uh in the front of the Bible before you start reading in Genesis, it has some really nice Bible timelines because a lot of times you'll hear a book of the Bible and you'll go, when was this, where does this fit in the storyline of the Bible, right?

So you'll see that there is a period called the period of the judges.

Don't think like, you know, Judge Judy or Joe Brown or whoever.

Think of like a tr uh a chief, basically.

It was it was somebody who God would raise up to help the nation through this process of redemption.

So what you're gonna see is a 450-year period where the nation goes through this cycle.

Now, go ahead and bring up that screenshot.

This is from the Bible Project.

Uh, if you're not wanting to buy books, um you can for free go to Bibleproject.com.

They have every book of the Bible illustrated and uh they give about an eight to ten minute overview of each of the books of the Bible.

It's excellent.

This is a screenshot from their teaching on judges.

So let's look at this now.

Let's start at uh 10 o'clock on the clock, right?

You see, um you see uh peace.

So this is describing the cycle, what most people call the cycle of sin of the nation during the period, 450-year period of the judges.

They would be in a time of peace, shalom, prosperity, things are going good, they're at peace with other nations, they're at peace with God, and in that process, their flesh would cause them, they would be seduced or tempted by idolatry.

They would turn their affections away from God, they would take the peace for granted, just like in Genesis 1 and 2 and 3.

They had they took the peace of God and the shalom for granted, and so they turn and they begin to sin.

In their flesh and free will, they begin to sin.

And then from there, then they would start to suffer.

And sometimes there would be a nation, you know, the Jebusites, the Amalekites, the Midianites, the Philistines, these different groups of people that would come in and would take over them, and they would go through a period of suffering.

And so if you take the story of Gideon, right, you remember that story?

And the story of Gideon, the nation is being, for seven years, they're being ruled by the Midianites for seven years.

And another one of the stories, um, they are in captivity for 40 years.

And so we see that through that period of time, you know, people often don't change, and nations often don't change until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.

And so you have this period of time where they're suffering and eventually they come to their senses and they begin to cry out to God and say, we don't want this anymore.

They turn their hearts back to God often from the pain of the sin and the pain of the oppression.

What's interesting is I've always called this the cycle of sin, and I've always heard it called this, but I'm changing it today.

I don't want to call it the cycle of sin anymore.

I want to call it the cycle of redemption.

The cycle of redemption.

This, if you make it about the sin, then it gives you and I, okay, too much credit for our ability to screw things up.

This really is about God's patience.

You look at why would you wait seven years to deliver them, God?

Why would you wait 40 years to deliver them, God?

Because some people take seven years or 40 years or something in between to come to their senses.

And so it was actually the patience of God, the grace of God, the goodness of God, that he gave them time to come to their senses.

And when they repented and they would turn, then he would deliver them and they would be back.

And we see this 450-year cycle.

This happens over and over and over again.

We're going to get to this in a few weeks, but you get the idea.

All right, now hold on, leave that up there and look at this.

You see this meta-narrative, right?

Can you see within this the idea of peace and shalom and good creation, the way it's intended, and then the fall and sin and flesh, and then how that turns into redemption and then restoration.

Okay, this runs all the way from the garden, it runs all the way through the period of the judges, it runs all the way through the period of the kings until you get to Jesus.

And Jesus shows up in a broken world, Jesus shows up in a divided world, and Jesus shows up trying to help the world understand that he is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the earth, that he has come for salvation and redemption and restoration to a world that is broken and is full of flesh and is hurting each other and is dog eat dog and is attack, you attack me, I attack you.

And he shows up in this broken world and he talks, he he takes it from just nation to individual and to think about yourself.

And so he tells this, he tells this trilogy of parables to help us to understand what to do in our fallen state.

And this trilogy of parables, he starts with a lost sheep.

And and what is a sheep?

It's it's it's a it's a dumb animal, it's an ignorant animal.

Sheep are not rebellious animals, they're not they're not trying to mess it up, they just foolishly wander off.

And so this not rebellious but foolish, ignorant sheep, almost like back in the creation story when it's like, well, I want to be wise, but I went about it the wrong way.

And so the sheep wanders off.

And it says, when that sheep wandered off, the shepherd left the 99 to go pursue that one.

It's not the story of the lost shepherd, it's not the story of the sheep's ability to wiggle free and go find the shepherd.

It's the the shepherd's ability to get to that sheep at any cost.

The second kind of lostness is the lost coin, and it's the one who's been misplaced.

It's an inanimate object.

It's weird to use an inanimate object to work talk about humans, but that's what he does.

He talks about some of us have been misplaced.

Like you didn't you didn't get to pick whose house they dropped you off at.

You didn't get to pick who was in that basement with you that one time.

You you didn't get to pick with what happened that day on that date.

You didn't get to pick what what family you were born into.

You didn't get to pick whether you were born to a drug addict or a functional marriage.

You didn't get to pick getting caught in the middle.

You didn't get to pick in it, you were placed.

You were born into it.

By the time you were had the tools and the faculties to even start to sort it out, much had happened already.

You already had baggage, you'd been placed.

And the story is of a woman, the the coin isn't just a coin, it's like a wedding ring, and it says, so valuable, she wouldn't stop till she swept the house clean to find.

She swept all night, all night, to pursue.

And then the last is the story of a third kind of lostness.

It's a lost son, a rebellious son.

This isn't a foolish wander-off.

This is a son that knew exactly what he's doing.

He disrespected his father.

He said, I'm out of here.

Took half of his stuff, left, and got lost.

And the story is now of a father that knows what that son needs and he's patient with his rebellious son.

It's not a story of a father who goes running off the porch and he runs into the town and he bangs on every door, which is probably what I would have a tendency to do.

But but he he he would he didn't go bang on every door.

He didn't go snatch this guy out and snatch the needle out of his arm and go, you know, cuss his friends out and go do.

He didn't do any of that.

He sat on the porch and he waited patiently.

Incredible patience.

Sometimes seven years, sometimes 40.

But he sat there and the text says that the prodigal son got so low he hit rock bottom.

And it said, when he hit rock bottom, it said he came to his senses.

And when he came to his senses, he had a partial revelation of his father.

He said, you know, there's no way my dad will let me be a son, but maybe he'll let me be a slave.

And even my dad's slaves and servants get to eat better than this.

I'm looking at this pig slop and I'm about to dig in.

This is how bad it's gotten.

And some of you have been there, you're like, I didn't know it could get this bad.

I didn't know it could hurt this bad.

I didn't know I could get this low.

And he said, in that low moment, he didn't go back into the city, he didn't go back into the sin.

He repented and he went home.

And when he was a long way off, the father ran to him.

And then he got a revelation of his father, which is not just you can come here and be my servant and live in guilt and work it off and I'll feed you.

But he put a ring on his finger and he put a robe on his back and he reinstated him as a son and he gave him grace because our father knows what to do with his fallen children.

He knows which ones need you to leave the 99 for the one.

He knows which ones to sweep the house for, and he knows which ones to be patient and wait on.

I'm waiting on you.

I'm waiting on you.

I'll wait as long as it takes.

Even if it kills me, I'll wait on you.

So the same narrative that runs from God killing a lamb to cover the shame in the garden goes to the lamb slain from the foundation of the earth.

Little nugget for you.

The conversation of Jesus on the cross with the thief.

Remember this?

They have a little dialogue with the thief on the cross, and the thief has a revelation of who Jesus is, and Jesus says, Today you'll be with me in.

It's an allusion back to the Genesis 1, all the way back to Eden.

So this narrative runs all the way through the story of the Bible, and it runs all the way to the story of you and to the story of me.

And so when we look at our lives and we look at the many narratives, the stuff that doesn't make any sense, the stuff that will never resolve, the thing that was a blip on the radar, and the story that was extensive that impacted your life and shaped you.

We bring that all today.

We look at it through the lens of wherever you are today, whether you're living in peace, whether you're in a place of shame and brokenness.

Today we serve a God since the beginning of human history has been redeeming and restoring.

Take him up on it.

Let's pray.

Lord, we come to you in the powerful name of Jesus.

Lord, we're about to baptize some people, and in front of us we're gonna have a vivid picture of grace, of forgiveness, of redemption, of restoration.

Lord, as our brothers and sisters go into the water, warmth of your grace will cover every hair on their head and every part of their skin.

And those mercies are new every morning.

And so today, Lord, even as we've taken time to see this run through the whole Bible today, it really impacts us where we are, where we stand right here, right now.

So we take a moment to say thank you for your grace, thank you for your redemption, and thank you for new life.

In Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.