Savior: The Beautiful Exchange | Part 2

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

There's this moment that I've been thinking a lot about recently, and uh between my mom and I, and it's this story that I've probably told a handful of times in the last few months, and really I think it kind of just lives rent-free in my mind now.

Um When I was a kid, I was probably like five years old, and I was like watching Power Rangers, and I got up and I got really excited, and I went to my mom.

I went up to my mom and she knew I had something to say, and I looked up at all four foot ten of her, and yeah, she's not that tall.

Um neither was I.

Um I looked up at her and I was like, mom, can we can you have another kid so I can have another brother?

And I was so serious, and she took me really seriously because she looked back at me and deadpan, like real, like without breaking stride or a smile or anything, she looked at me and she's like, the factory is closed.

Without any hint of like worry about like disappointing me or anything, she said that, she like walked back to the kitchen, laughed to herself, and felt like she had a mic drop moment.

And then there's just like five-year-old me, like really con like bummed, but also confused.

I was like, wait, I thought there were storks, now there's a factory, like which which one is it?

And what I realized about that moment and that story in my life was that that kid was what he was wanting to do, that five-year-old me, he wanted to share his family with other people.

Like, I was really enjoying my parents, I loved my parents, I love being big brother, and I was like, man, I really want other people to experience this little community that I have with my family.

That's what five-year-old me was wanting.

And I want to recognize for a second, when we hear the word family, especially in a room with this many people, um, that it has a whole host of different feelings and connotations that comes with it.

And even simply living on this side of the world in 2024, we all have different like images and pictures in our mind with what family should look like or what family should be.

Loaded with plenty of imagery.

And maybe for you, that the family you were born into was full of heartbreak and dysfunction.

Or maybe for you, family is something that can't be trusted, or that you want nothing to do with.

Or maybe you were like five-year-old me, where family was something that you cherished and loved and wanted to share.

Wherever you're at with that picture of family in your mind, regardless of it all, inherent to all of us is this need for connection.

Like that's what five-year-old me wanted was connection.

There's this longing in our hearts to be truly known and to be truly loved.

And we know this is true from the beginning of Scripture's story, from the beginning of the human narrative, because it's what God does, right?

He sees all that is good.

Genesis 1 and 2, he's creating all these things, he's forming a place for people to thrive and to enjoy.

And yet there's one thing at the very beginning of our story that God says is he sees the lone human, he sees that, and he says this it's not good for a human to be alone.

And intuitively, we kind of know this, right?

If you're around a crying baby, um, what happens when you pick them up?

They stop crying, right?

When they're held.

Uh, over a shelter in place or in COVID, um, we did this weird thing where we downloaded this app called Zoom.

That way we could stay connected with the people we were really missing.

And when people are close to death, what what people want is for their loved ones to be near, right?

Nobody wants to die alone, is what we say often.

And that's because God created the human condition to be bent towards relationship and connection.

And within all of us is this deep, deep desire to be close to God and to others, whether we know it or not.

Have you ever thought about how you've tried to fulfill that longing, right?

To be connected, to be known, and to be loved?

Let's for a second just consider all the some of the things that we spend all of our time and resources towards.

Uh, social media, right?

The classic one.

We'd often turn to these platforms to connect with others, to share our stories and experience and thoughts, to seek validation and support.

Like we said, technology keeps getting better and better.

Our phones and our Apple Vision Pro things or whatever it is, uh, all giving us the ability to stay connected with anyone at any moment, in any place in the world, to never be alone.

Um, pets, many of us find companionship and a sense of connection through our dogs or our cats, and we have this sense of just love and support.

We engage in hobbies and interests, sports, art, or music, because it can help provide a sense of belonging and shared interest, something to enjoy with others.

Work or school, uh, we we go to our offices and and um and we do these school projects to all work towards something together, to be connected.

And lastly, there's books and movies and TV shows, right?

These fictional stories that can provide a sense of connection by allowing us to empathize with characters or experiences, or just to like be brought into that and to and to have those experiences in these mediums.

And again, none of these necessarily bad, right?

Some of these are actually really good.

God forbid I like say having a dog is bad.

I know how much some of you love your dogs.

But at the core of these things, whether we are conscious to it or not, there is this desire to sidestep sidestep the suffering that comes from loneliness.

We go to these things wanting to fill that longing that we have.

And the questions that are underneath the surface that we're actually asking is do I matter?

Can I be loved?

Do people care?

And that same desire for connection with others is one that we have with God.

And in turn, we start to ask those same questions of Him.

Does God care?

Do I matter?

Does God love me?

And this morning, as we look to our Savior's sermon from the cross today, we'll see that Jesus, he answers those questions with the resounding yes.

You do matter.

He does care.

You are loved.

But more than that, he actually meets our needs by inviting us into a new reality.

Like he doesn't just care, he also provides.

He invites us into a new reality full of hope and healing.

So, church, if you're following along in your Bibles or in the notes, let's turn back to John chapter 19 and explore how Jesus answers that for us today on his sermon on the cross.

John 19 · chapter mention

The beginning of our passage, if you remember, uh, it starts with these Roman soldiers, and they're basically seeing Jesus as good as dead.

Right?

So what they do is they take his stuff and they start to divvy it amongst themselves, and like they're trying to make a profit.

And if you think about it, like they're already at their job and they're like, oh, you know what, let's make more money out of this.

And that's what they're doing.

Meanwhile, while that scene's playing over here, meanwhile, there are just a handful of people that our passage tells us about that are at the foot of Jesus' cross.

And if you're following along in the notes, the first thing that we learn from his sermon, that from this passage from today, is simply to draw near to Jesus.

Right?

It says, but standing by the cross of Jesus.

Let's consider a couple of the people that are moving towards God in this moment.

Uh, one, we hear about this woman named Mary.

And uh she's a good story because earlier in the gospel narrative, um, Mary is one that Jesus actually had to rebuke, it says, or scripture says Jesus rebuked her.

Um, because Mary has these two sons.

She's hearing about this rabbi preaching and teaching about this new kingdom, and she's like, I have an idea, and goes to Jesus, like, Jesus, my two sons, would would you give them a more prominent and important role in your kingdom?

And like, would they, you know, like, can you do a girl a favor?

And um he doesn't, and he like sees that and he's like, Oh, she doesn't understand, she doesn't get it.

So what he does is he has to correct her.

And I don't know how you would feel.

I imagine myself in that moment, if I like really uh misunderstood what Jesus was doing and he had to tell me that, I'd probably feel embarrassed or ashamed and all those things.

Yet what I love is that her presence at the foot of this cross after that moment says something about the kind of correction and Jesus offers us.

That it shouldn't lead us into shame or hiding.

It actually should move us towards the cross, towards God.

That it's not highlighted by saying that there's something irredeemably wrong about you, but actually his correction and his accountability, whatever it is, is highlighted by love.

So she's there.

Then there's John, too, right?

Uh the quote-unquote beloved disciple.

He's a dear friend and companion of Jesus.

If you read Jesus' story, you know that he's like one of the inner circle.

He's one of his like really close best friends.

And this story that we're reading, John's gospel, he's the one that's attributed to all that we're reading together.

And if you read down to verse 35, and I love that he does that, and he gets to call himself the beloved disciple.

Side note.

But the reason for him writing this, if you skip down to verse 35, if you have your Bibles with you, he tells us why he's writing all this to begin with.

It says that he's writing all this that you and I, that people might believe in Jesus the way that he did, as Lord and Savior and giver of life.

So John, he's drawing close to the agony and the punishment of his friend.

But lastly, let's think about Jesus' mother Mary, who's also at the foot of his cross.

The only other time that Mary's mentioned in John's Gospel is actually a rather significant one.

And it's probably a story you're familiar with.

The first and only other time Mary's mentioned in John's Gospel was actually at the very beginning.

At the very beginning of Jesus' account of Jesus' life, he mentions Mary.

And it's at a wedding where they run out of wine.

Starting to sound familiar.

When Mary notices that, right, they're at this wedding, this big celebration, wine runs out, she goes to Jesus and says, Can you provide?

Can you do something?

And what Jesus ends up happening, what ends up happening is Jesus performs his first miracle by turning water into wine.

And our faith tradition often tries to minimize Mary's story and the biblical narrative, and I get that.

But there's something to admire here, right?

There's something that John's telling us.

From the very beginning, Mary knew that Jesus could do something.

She had certainty that Jesus was her son, yes, but also that he was more than that.

And right from the outset, John is telling us that she had the faith of a disciple.

To say that Jesus in you is the power to change any circumstance, any situation.

You can turn water into wine.

Like from the very beginning of the story, Mary is portrayed as this person who is a disciple of Jesus.

And now at the end of it, Mary is here at the first miracle, and now right before his last one, before the resurrection.

But now she's approaching the cross in probably the most natural inclinations.

Right?

She's not coming just as a disciple with the faith of a disciple, but she's coming as Jesus' mother.

Who knows what uh what was going on with her?

But she was about to lose her son.

That was very clear.

And I can only imagine the hurts and the agony she was experiencing as she watched her son Jesus be mocked and tortured.

And more than that, on like a very practical level, um at this point, Mary's believed to be a widow.

Her husband is no longer with them.

And her husband is gone, and now she's losing her eldest son.

If you know, remember, this is the first century ancient Near East, different, very different cultural context and time.

But with no husband and her eldest son about to be killed, um, the way she was about to provide for herself was about to be very, very difficult if it wasn't already.

But her life was about to change for the worse.

And yet, with all that crushing anxiety and weight that was uh was befalling her and would come for the next few days and weeks and years of her life, she still came.

She still approached, simply to be near and to love Jesus.

And it's sometimes lost on us, right, 2,000 years later, living on this side of history.

But remember that the cross was it was actually a Roman form of torture, right?

Of execution.

It was it was meant and designed for the most lowly of criminals.

Uh it was, it's I know it's hard because it's kind of like a fashion statement now, but like if like if people in Jesus' time saw like all the crosses that we were wearing are on our shirts, like it'd kind of be like if some people were walking around here wearing jewelry of like guillotines.

Like that's that's what this was.

It was this torture device, this tool of the Roman government to shame and to mock and to kill.

So Jesus, he was a criminal in the eyes of Roman law.

He was being mocked as a political prisoner, shamed for being king of the Jews.

And his his death was being played out right before this small group of people.

But by these few people coming near to Jesus while the torture is happening, while he's hanging on a cross, they were risking similar mockery and suffering.

Because essentially, what were they doing?

They were identifying with a convicted criminal.

And yet, these few people they knew that, they understood it, it wasn't lost on them.

And something in them says that I still have to draw near to God right now.

I'm gonna move towards that.

And all these people that are coming to Jesus in this moment were enduring some kind of suffering or hardship.

Right?

We just kind of went over it a little.

One person losing their closest friend and companion, another losing her son.

Some probably came and left watching their rabbi who preached a new kingdom, and that their suffering, what where their suffering was coming from, was now from a loss of hope.

That the one person that they thought was going to bring liberation and freedom was now bound to a cross.

Moments from death, their hope was lost.

Their suffering came from that.

And I don't know what you're coming into uh church with this morning, but I'm willing to bet up to this point as you hear about does God care?

These people having suffering and hurts and bringing it to the cross, that there's something that you can point to that just feels lacking.

Something or feeling that you've asked, does God really care about that?

Maybe it's a loss of a friendship, maybe it's some financial burden, maybe it really is heartbreaking family dynamics or something else.

Regardless of whatever it is, I know that our tendencies are to believe that Jesus either doesn't care, or even if he did, what could he do to change my circumstances?

What could he do to bring any relief?

Well, John, Mary, and his mother, they probably had a similar feeling, right?

And yet they still came.

They drew near to God because where else could they go?

They were unsure if there was any real possibility of replacing what they were about to lose.

Companionship, family, hope.

And yet they still came.

They still approached that cross.

And it shouldn't be lost on us again.

This is what I kind of what I love about the story, is that at the beginning of our passage, right, on one on one part of the scene, there's these soldiers who what they're doing, right, is they're trying to find their hope in making more money.

Or like, this is you know what's gonna make my life better?

Is to sell this dead man's clothes that I might have more.

And what they are, right, is are merchants of death.

Like that's what they're handing out.

There's Roman soldiers, not Jesus, not the first person that they put on a cross, and they're merchants of death.

That's happening over here.

Juxtappos with that, what's happening right near the cross, these people that are approaching Jesus, is Jesus, right?

Right next to the people who are merchants of death.

What he's ready to do is hand out life.

And this is Jesus' response to them, right?

With with their eyes fixed up towards Jesus, he looks back at them with compassion, and he turns their gaze from him to actually one another, and he says this woman, behold your son, talking to his mother Mary, motioning to John, and then he looks to John, and he motions to Mary and says, Behold, your mother.

What does Jesus do here?

What is Jesus doing?

He sees their suffering and their caring or and their their suffering.

He does this beautiful exchange.

He sees their needs, their burdens, their hurts, and he exchanges that and provides them with a new family.

He's saying, Mary, here's your son.

John, here's your mother.

The second thing, again, if you're following along in the notes, is that we are invited to receive from Jesus.

Draw near, but don't just draw near.

There's actually something that Jesus wants to give you.

And this is pretty incredible, right?

Because consider the story.

Jesus' nails are, or hands are nailed to a cross, and yet with his hands bound, he is still able to give and to offer.

This is how William Barclay, a commentator, um, a Bible commentator, this is how he talks about this moment right here.

He says, There is something infinitely moving in the fact that Jesus, in the agony of the cross, when the salvation of the world hung in the balance, thought of the loneliness of his mother in the days ahead.

He never forgot the duties that lay to his hand.

He was Mary's eldest son.

And even in the moment of his cosmic battle, he did not forget the simple things that lay near home.

To the end of the day, even on the cross, Jesus was thinking more of the sorrows of others than of his own.

Does that not tell you about the beauty of our Savior?

Does that not tell you about the character of a God who become man as displayed for the world to see?

That actually our sins would put him to on a cross to suffer, and yet his concern was your suffering and my suffering, the suffering of others.

And more than that, is that he provides for that suffering, how?

With a new way of relating to one another.

He gives them the church, he gives them new family, he gives brothers and sisters.

And nothing could stop him from from providing that for you and for me, not even hands nailed to a cross.

And remember, right, they're standing near.

We've said that like a million times now.

They're standing close to the cross.

When he says these words, they're a little different from the other statements that we're going to explore together in this series.

Uh, you'll hear things like, It is finished, or last year, father forgive them, or last week, father forgive them.

And there's these exclamations, but this is a little bit different.

Right?

These are people coming close, having to having to lean in to listen.

And rather than this big exclamation, it's rather a picture of Jesus seeing these really hurting people right in front of him.

Sees com sees them with compassion.

And rather than this loud yell, more like a tender whisper, he gives them hope in being part of the family of God.

He provides with this.

Low voice that you have to like draw near to hear.

He says, Behold your mother, behold, your son.

And John's gospel, it's littered with the imagery of family, right?

He says this in the very beginning of his writing when he says, But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become what?

Children, to become family of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Jesus, too, like he this whole time, if you follow his story, he's redefining family every step of the way.

When he's a kid, they approach him in the temple, and they're like, Where are your parents?

And he's like, My father is in heaven.

When he's out teaching in Galilee, they're like, You're saying all these things, but where's your family?

Where's your mom and your brothers?

And in Matthew's gospel, he records Jesus saying this, for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

In other words, what Jesus is doing is saying there's something of far greater significance to how we should consider our families more than just our biology.

Who is it that's part of the family of God?

Jesus says, doing God's will far and above, uh far and above who you're blood related to.

Who's part of God's family?

All those who come to Jesus and seek to follow and obey Him.

But the question is, right, there's no striving, there's no need to make yourself any better.

He says to come and belong, be part of the family.

But the question is, how is God caring for you and for me by putting us as part of this new family, this spiritual family?

Like, what does that really even do for my suffering and my hurts?

And on the simplest level, we kind of talked about it, right?

There's that relational part that we're all deeply longing for.

Within the church, within the family of God, we come and we belong.

That we don't have to strive to earn love and acceptance.

Jesus gives us that.

One of Paul's favorite metaphors for talking about Jesus' followers, you know what it is.

If you read his letters, time and time again, he says that we are to relate to one another, those who are going to follow Jesus as brothers and sisters.

There's this familial thing that Paul also really cares about, that hears Jesus' words, no, that's a very important thing.

That within the church, we're to have this sibling connection, one of deep commitment and loyalty to one another.

And not because any one person has earned it more than the other.

But also God cares for us through being part of his family because he also calls the church his hands and feet.

Right?

When we come to the church, we're to find shoulders to cry on, lending hands to help pull us out of these ruts, feet that will carry the presence of God's hope in our lives, finding hospitality in one another's homes, ears that would listen to our stories, like very practically and physically, part of how God wants to care for you and for me is by giving us one another.

And in some ways, it's actually really hard to quantify like how being part of God's new family really shows care.

In some ways, what I how I like to say is you kind of just need to experience it or see it happen right in front of you.

I just finished serving as our youth pastor for the past few years, and one of my favorite things is the number of stories that we would get about parents bringing students who were having a hard time connecting at school, who were just not doing well in social situations or with their grades.

And they would come to this little youth ministry where there's a bunch of students who just empowered by the Holy Spirit to show love and hospitality and care, and that there would be these adult volunteers who would do two things, who would who would love God and love students, and these students who are having such hard times would come and experience the family of God, maybe for the first time, love and acceptance, maybe for the first time.

And their lives would be changed, and they'd want to stick around.

And all of a sudden, these things at school or with their families or their friends, for a lot of them, things started to change and get better.

Like I love those stories.

Now I'm not saying like all of you have to go serve in our youth ministry, um, unless you are an adult woman who has passed a background check and loves junior high girls, then we'd love to hear from you.

But I just wonder sometimes for us, what if we were more like our youth ministry, where we desired to be with one another, where we were committed to one another, where we lived in the power of the Spirit to love and accept others just as they are, as God continues to transform and renew them.

Another story I think of is when I was in college, it's probably in my early 20s, went on this like summer mission trip where I got to be around other students who wanted to just follow Jesus with their whole lives.

And uh I made a friend, and we were just talking one day, and he had this deep conviction to follow Jesus with his whole life.

And he also had this same sex attraction, and his deep conviction was that, man, to follow Jesus, like I need to live a life uh uh to be celibate, lifelong, to not get married.

And that was and that's what it meant to follow Jesus for him.

And he also wrestled with this tension, and we talked about it as how, man, that just sounds really lonely and hard and difficult.

But the thing that he told me about was there's actually this family at his church that brought him in, that would invite them to uh family holidays, that he would share a number of meals in their homes, that he would have a significant role uh in their kids in their kids' lives, that they brought him in as family.

And that loneliness that he was afraid of, that this family that showed the love of Jesus held that tension and said it doesn't have to be that way.

And for whatever it is, whatever reason, we uh we end up being single.

Like the church is the last place where it should be a life sentence of loneliness.

And I just wonder, how much different would our lives look if if we lived into the family of God, the one that He has offered us?

If we were part of communities that really knew about our struggles and how our burdens were actually meant to be shared with our brothers and sisters.

And whatever it is that you came into this morning with, could God have brought you here to awakening for this season, sitting in these chairs, that there might be a handful of siblings, maybe right next to you, who in the power of the Holy Spirit might bring comfort or accountability or love where there hasn't been.

You see, the family of God, it's so important to Jesus that he wanted to use some of his dying breaths to tell us that our hope can be found in the body of Christ, Christ's bride, the church, the family of God.

And he says, life and flourishing, that's where you can find it.

And I've heard many sermons about this, the family of God, and um, kind of just end there, right?

Like, okay, we should all get along, be nice to one another, receive care, and let's sing kumbaya.

But the last thing that we learn is that after drawing near to Jesus, receiving from Jesus, it doesn't end there.

We're to give like Jesus.

Our passage ends like this.

And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own home.

What that's saying is what John did is he actually took Jesus' new family vision seriously.

He brought in Mary as if she was his own mother.

He rearranged his life to help care and love and support.

Like, could you imagine if this moment happens at the cross?

John and Mary have this, Jesus does this great exchange.

And John just tells Mary, all right, well, see you again next week at the 1115 service.

And it sounds like a joke, right?

But that's how often we think about our church community.

Rather than see it as the new family that Jesus has formed, and to see it as something, uh, we see it as something as we can just show up to and hear some person talk for like 30-ish minutes and not a minute more, and then bounce.

No, Jesus says that the way that people will know you are his disciple, do you know this?

Is how you love others.

Right?

Is the way that you love one another.

Have you ever considered what Jesus' love looks like?

He was often inconvenienced.

He had to hang out with people who constantly misunderstood him, he had to be patient and forgiving.

And all of these things in our Western hyper-individualistic culture, these things are just things we don't want to be part of.

Things that sound like too much.

And I can't think of a greater apologetic or reason for the faith or why the church should just like have this strong cultural or strong force in this cultural moment is to live a countercultural way, to offer that to people.

Patience and forgiveness, love and care, community, belonging.

And the best part of all this is we often suck at it.

Or I do, right?

I often mess up and fumble and do it imperfectly.

Yet Jesus is convinced that this is the best way for us to be cared for and for us to care for our brothers and sisters is to commit to this family.

We had a pastor here who used to say, uh, we want to be more than just a Sunday church.

And I love that.

Uh, it's such a quippy and easy way to remember it's true.

Like we said, family, the kind of family that Jesus is forming doesn't just happen by coming together once a week for an hour.

No, that's why we have things like small groups or a young professionals group or a youth ministry or a college group or places to serve like a cafe team or a teardown team, or even the like quick meet and greet.

If you're new and this is church is weird to you, I get it, you're excused.

But for those of us who want to follow Jesus, that's a chance for us to offer hospitality and love and care from one sibling to another, from one sibling to a potential sibling.

All these things, that whole list of stuff, right?

Uh we have these things in place.

We don't do them just to keep things busy, but because we so seriously take God's word when he says we are to practice the quote unquote one another's.

If you read your New Testament scriptures, you will see this phrase again and again and again and says, one another.

And when you see that phrase, it's often it often says things like this.

We are to love one another, be devoted to one another, exhort one another, forgive one another, encourage one another.

It's going to take us not just receiving from Jesus, but also for us to give like Jesus.

It's going to require a sort of death and resurrection.

This road to Easter, what we call the Lenten season in the church calendar, and really all of the Christian life is often marked by death and resurrection.

It's something our whole lives are kind of to be about.

That's what we celebrate on Easter weekend, right?

That something that death would happen, but that God would bring new life through it.

And for most of us sitting here, we need to actually put to death something.

That way, something can receive new life.

And for most of us, what that thing is, is we need to put to death whatever family looks like.

Because for many of us, we think that our biological families are the most important.

But Jesus is very clear when he says that is not the case if you are to follow him.

Now, if you have a spouse and kids or loving parents, much like I do, yes, cherish that, enjoy that, cultivate that, take good care of it.

I pray that that's they're part of the family of God as well.

But if you are a Jesus follower, yes, that is your family, but that's not your whole family.

We need to put to death our comfortable, more predictable, and easy versions of families that way, not just because like God wants to kill your dream or whatever, but that God might give you a better dream.

That Jesus might resurrect that picture of family into something far more glorious and beautiful than we could ever construct on our own.

That's the gospel, right?

Death and resurrection.

And that's what Jesus is doing with family.

And it's a hard but worthwhile call in our lives.

But the church, it's not a building, right?

It's not an hour and 15 minutes at 9.30 or 11:15.

And it's not even like a 501c that you get tax write-offs for tithing to.

No, the church is the sons and daughters of the Father God who is united by the Holy Spirit, to willing to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

And I can't think of a better way to close all of this than to see that this has actually been part of God's heart for humanity always.

I'm going to invite the band to start coming back up.

But I wanted to end with this story from our Old Testament about a guy named Mephibosheth.

And I heard this joke, it's like really it's like he would be in all of our like children's Bibles if his name was just a little bit easier to say.

But if you're unfamiliar with Mephibosheth, he was the son of Jonathan and the grandson of Saul.

Now, Jonathan, Mephibosheth's dad, was David's closest friend before Jonathan was killed.

And to complicate things even further, um, Mephibosheth's grandfather, Jonathan's dad, was a guy named Saul, who was the leader and king of this rival kingdom.

And for much of his life, what he actively tried to do was to seek and to kill David, Jonathan's best friend.

Well, David, what he would eventually do is he would be appointed king, right?

Saul's kingdom would fall, and he would be anointed king, and there would be this changing of power from Saul to David.

And when this when this was happening, there's kind of this mad dash, there's all this commotion, right?

It's the changing of a regime, a really scary thing if you live in a kingdom.

And in the whole commotion, what ends up happening is Mephibosheth as a little kid, as a little baby, he would accidentally be dropped.

And from that moment, he would lose the ability to walk forever.

Now, if this wasn't tragedy enough, think about this time and culture again, where all of your ability to provide for yourself, to be worthwhile and your identity came from physical labor or agriculture or being a soldier.

Like, Mephibosheth, like he didn't have the chance to go to some coding boot camp or learn C.

Like, that was still a few years away.

So Mephibosheth, like years later, David remembers his friend Jonathan.

And he wants to show kindness to Jonathan.

He's like, hey, is there not anyone left in my friend Jonathan's family that I might show kindness to?

And so what he does is he ends up seeking out Mephibosheth.

And I imagine them just finding him maybe on like the countryside or on the edge of the road, kind of just begging or trying to survive another day, suffering for so long, when all of a sudden the king shows up and invites him into his home.

David does that, finds Mephibosheth, welcomes him in, and he says this in 2 Samuel chapter 9 Do not fear, for I will show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan, and I will restore to you all the land of Saul your father, and you shall eat at my table always.

2 Samuel 9 · chapter mention

So what happens?

The king seeks Mephibosheth out, and his life is forever changed again, but for the better.

And I imagine him just sitting at David's table where he's invited to eat forever, and there's like David's kids, like the great and wise Solomon or the beautiful Tamar and all that.

And if I were Mephibosheth, just feeling so like out of place, like I don't belong.

And yet David says, No, you belong here.

You can eat at my table always.

Mephibosheth, he really had no reason to be eating at that table because he is literally part of a rival enemy kingdom.

And yet, because of who Mephibosheth's dad was, Jonathan, David said, You have a place at my table always.

You are part of my family.

And church, if it's not clear, this is what Jesus does for you and for me.

We were once enemies, but because of the cross, we were made children.

We were invited into the family of God.

We were invited to eat at Jesus' table forever that He has prepared for you and for me.

And because Jesus has done that for you and for me, we actually get to offer that to others, to bring brothers and sisters who might feel hungry or alone and say, Come and eat, be part of this family.

And as the psalmist says in Psalm 68, he says, God sets the lonely in families.

So, church, as we go to the communion table now as we remember that Jesus has made a way for us to sit at this table.

I want to challenge you as we sing these songs to remember who you are, who God says you are, and who said who God says you are to be to one another.

And also remember that as you eat this meal, that God has given you a place at the table, at the family table.

And because of that, we can offer that to the world around us.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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