Three16: Blood vs Water with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaChurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at Medichurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life.

God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Welcome back to week two of our 316 series.

If you're new with us, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at Meta.

You have joined us in week two of a series where we are building context every week.

We're gonna do some review, but if you want the whole picture, you can always catch up online anytime.

You can go to our website, metachurch.tv, or you can go to our YouTube channel and get fully caught up in the series.

What we're doing in this series is we are focusing on what is probably the most famous verse in all of Scripture, and is probably one of the most well-known sentences ever written in human history, and that is John 3.16.

It says this for God loved the world in this way.

Many people know this verse.

If you grew up in church, you only have one verse memorized, odds are it's John 3.16.

And even if you did not grow up in church, you have probably at least heard the reference of John 3.16.

Last week we talked about how Tim Tebow wore it across his eye black under his helmet.

Last week, ironically, we talked about how Stone Cold made it his Austin 3.16 branding.

And then that fool showed up and put a stunner on somebody this weekend.

Not that we were paying any attention to that.

We are using this as our reference point for five weeks in a row.

And what we're really trying to do, because every every week we talk about how much context matters, but we've never spent five weeks setting the context for one verse.

And yet, this verse, John 3.16, in it is everything we believe about God, about Jesus, and about the good news of eternal life.

And so we're trying to really understand what was going on, what were people experiencing?

What situations was Jesus in?

And so we're gonna continue building that context today.

My message is blood versus water.

Blood versus water.

Would you pray with me?

God, we love you.

We thank you for loving us.

God, I pray for anxious hearts in the room.

I pray for my anxious heart.

God, I uh I ask that you would just speak today.

We believe you're always moving, you're always speaking, you're guiding, you're encouraging, you're convicting.

I pray that we would just be humble enough to let down any pretense and allow you to do exactly what you want to do.

I thank you for a local faith community like Metachurch that exists for all people in all places in life and in all places on their faith journey.

God, I thank you for a place where you can come and belong here, even if you don't believe what we believe.

And God, we're here seeking you.

We trust that we'll find you.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

If you're ready to get to blood versus water, say amen.

Amen.

There's a really, really common saying blood is thicker than water.

Blood is thicker than water.

And no doubt you've heard that expression, and that you probably at least think you know what it means.

Blood is thicker than water.

And what that means in in our context and in our culture, what it's come to mean is that you put your family first.

You put your people first, your blood, your family and your people, they come first, they get your loyalty, they are who you will ride or die for.

Blood first.

You don't mess with blood.

You mess with blood.

I will go from Clayton Tyner to Will Smith in a second, bro.

Ah, that's messed up.

I know that's messed up.

That's messed up.

It's funny though, you're right.

It is fun.

It's not funny.

Talk about that in church, bro.

Why'd you even bring that up?

Say what you will.

Will, right?

Blood is thicker than water, and that's that's about family, but family's about more than family, and so it's for sure your immediate family, you know?

Mom, dad, brothers, sisters, immediate family, husband, wife, sons, daughters.

It's also your extended family because some of you, you know, we don't really know our extended family.

Remember as a kid, there would be uh family reunions, and I'd be like, all these people?

I'm related to all these people.

I've never seen some of these people before.

But if it's family, you're there for them.

That's how it works.

We've all probably also experienced a non-relative relationship that was actually closer to you than a lot of people, because you got family, family, family all over the place.

You got the redneck cousins on your mom's side, you got the creepy uncle with the mustache, we got family that we're not that close to, and then you have ride or die friends, and that's blood too.

That's loyalty.

When I went to college, I met a guy named Curry, Curry Dias, and we we ended up being roommates all throughout college, and still, you know, just one of my absolute closest friends.

He's uh he's on Team USA, he he's he lives in a different state.

I could call him now, I don't know how he would get here from Alabama in three minutes.

Like that's how it goes.

And I was trying to think, we have so many stories.

I mean, I could just tell stories for hours, and we you know, we got into a lot of trouble together too, but there was one time we were really innocent.

We were just hanging out in our uh apartment complex in the parking lot, we were throwing a ball around.

We we went to school in Brownwood, Texas.

There was nothing to do, and so legitimately, this time we really hadn't done anything wrong, and all of a sudden, uh a big group of trucks just tore into the parking lot.

I mean, they were going really fast, and we had no idea, we knew they didn't live there, and pretty soon they circled us up and we were like, something's happening, something's going down.

Eight guys jumped out of these different trucks, and they jumped out, it became immediately clear to jump us.

Now, we hadn't done anything wrong, but one of our friends had, okay, and we were like guilty by association, they couldn't find him, so they were gonna take it out on us.

Eight verses two, and just to set the scene, I was in pajama pants and flip-flops, like not the attire I would have picked for that occasion.

And so I was looking at him and he was looking at me.

Here's how I know he's family.

He's a friend, but he's family.

Without any hesitation and with full sincerity, he looked at me and said, If you can take three, I can take five.

I didn't say this, but the problem was I couldn't take three, you know.

But it was one of those, I don't know if y'all like Fast and the Furious, but it was one of those, one of those moments it's like they've got eight, we've got two, I'm in flip-flops, but we got family, you know, it's like this Vin Diesel moment.

And so that's blood.

Your family and your people.

And blood is thicker than water.

You will have their back.

Anybody else comes against them, you show up.

And that's how we operate.

You know, we create our tribes, we create our in-groups, and nothing comes against that, and that becomes the priority.

We're looking at John chapter 3, and what we're trying to do is understand the context and the mentality of the people who Jesus came to.

John 3 · chapter mention

And Jesus was born in Israel, he was born a Jewish man, and he was born in a Jewish context.

And in another passage, not in John 3, but in another passage, Jesus was teaching one time, and he asked a lawyer, he said, Do you know what the greatest commandment is?

And it's kind of a tricky question because Jesus had already taught on this, and it's not one commandment, it's two.

And the lawyer got it right: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

The bottom line of what Jesus taught was to love God and to love your neighbor.

And the lawyer asked in return, Who then is my neighbor?

Who's in the circle?

Whose blood?

He was trying to scale it down and figure out the peak the path of least resistance.

He was trying to figure out exactly who he had to extend that love to and make it as simple as possible.

And everyone listening in that context, all of this Jewish audience, they knew the answer to this question, or at least they thought they did.

Their neighbor, their blood, the ones they looked out for were their family and the people of Israel.

That was their in-group.

It was the nation, the chosen people of God to bring the Messiah to earth.

Israel was blood, everybody else, all the people and all other nations, they were just water.

As we step back into John chapter three, remember last week we saw the context that Israel, as this nation was in at the time, Rome had come in, and as the Roman Empire expanded, it came into Israel and put it under Rome's occupation.

That meant that the people of Israel, the proud people of God, had lost their freedom, they lost their autonomy, they lost their dignity, they lost their hope for their future.

And it just so happens there is another empire on earth today who is trying to expand itself as well.

And we talked about how if we can seek to understand and empathize even with what's happening in Ukraine, we have a chance of understanding the context that Jesus was in in Israel 2,000 years ago.

If you can really try to empathize with what's happening right now, the Ukrainian people fighting for their lives, scared to death, unsure about tomorrow, losing their sovereignty and their autonomy, if you can really put yourself there and all the pictures you're seeing all over online, then you can understand the people in Israel in Jesus' day.

They had already been conquered, they had already lost their freedoms, they were already paying their taxes to the foreign Roman Caesar, and they were desperate to get out of that situation.

Their best hope was the coming of a promised Messiah.

And there were a lot of prophecies in Jewish scripture about the Messiah.

And what the people at that time did is they kind of just selected the pieces that they liked and kind of ignored the prophecies that talked about the whole world and all people and all places, and instead they had a very nationalistic understanding of the coming of the Messiah.

The people were promised this Messiah, and they were hoping that he would be a man of military might, that when the Messiah came, he would raise up the army of Israel, push Rome out, and take back the kingdom of Israel once again.

And Jesus, who had shown up on the scene with all this power and all this strength, who had commanded the attention of almost the entire nation, thousands showing up just to hear him speak and to witness him do his miracles.

Everyone wondered if maybe this was the Messiah, and maybe if all that power to open the eyes of the blind and to actually command the forces of nature itself, if all of that power in Jesus was going to be used to fight for the kingdom of Israel.

We read last week in John chapter 3, starting at the very beginning, verse 1, there was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

John 3 · chapter mention

This man came to him at night and said, Rabbi, we know you're a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs unless God were with him.

And Jesus replied, Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of Israel.

Is that what he said?

No.

That seems like what he should have said, because the obvious context from Nicodemus is, Are you the Messiah?

Which really means, are you gonna help us get our kingdom back?

And Jesus came with a different set of priorities.

He wasn't focused on building a temporary earthly kingdom in Israel, he was focused on building an eternal, everlasting kingdom of God.

In verse 4, Nicodemus was confused.

How can anyone be born when he's old?

Nicodemus asked him, Can he enter his mother's womb a second time and be born?

And we didn't have time to dig into this last week, so we're gonna do it now.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee, which means he was the religious elite, the religious rulers.

Those were the Pharisees.

They actually had the first five books of the Old Testament, what they call the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

He would have had that memorized.

He could sit down and say all five books to you by memory.

He knew the Jewish history, he knew the laws of the Jewish people, he knew it all.

And his understanding and the understanding of everyone in Jesus' context was that they were automatically going to enter the kingdom of God because they were born a Jew.

You see, the Jewish people had been called out thousands of years earlier out of one man named Abraham.

And God told Abraham he would make him into a great nation, the nation of Israel.

And so, as long as your great, great, greatest grandfather was Abraham, you were going to enter the kingdom of God unless you did something really horrendous.

Like if you murdered a bunch of people, or if you were just out and about with all of your rage and lust, unless you like burnt the temple to the ground, you were going to go to the kingdom of God.

And it was this understanding Israel had formed over the years as the chosen people of God, now under Rome's occupation, that had caused them to see every other nation as an enemy and as an other.

The problem with this mentality is that in the Jewish mind at that time, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Israel had very little difference.

Sure, one was earthly and temporary, and one was later and eternal, but it would be made up of the people of God, and to them that meant Israel.

You see, they are missing the point not only of why Jesus came, but they are missing the point of why God called Israel as his chosen people in the first place.

If we go all the way back to the first book of the Bible, the first book of the Jewish scriptures, Genesis chapter 12, we see the moment that God called Abraham into this incredible opportunity.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

He said this: the Lord said to Abram, Go from your land, your relatives, and your father's house, leave it all to go to the land I will show you, and I will make you into a great nation.

I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt.

And here is the point of God calling Abraham, calling his chosen people, and sending Jesus through that lineage, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

All the people in all the places, all of the nations, all flesh, every person under the sun, all peoples on the earth will one day be blessed through you.

That was the purpose of Israel from the jump to grow into a great nation that dedicated themselves wholly and set apart to God to bring the Messiah, the Savior to the earth, who would not fight to build the kingdom of Israel, but who would fight to build the kingdom of God and open those doors to all people in all places.

And just so you're getting it, that means me, and that means you.

Jesus is trying to help Nicodemus understand this bigger picture, taking them back to the root of their purpose.

And back in John 3, verse 5, now, Jesus answered, Truly, I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the spirit, of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

John 3:5

Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of spirit is spirit.

And this is where we stopped last week.

You must be born of both water and of the spirit.

Jesus is getting ready to make a point that would change the world and all of human history.

You must be born of water and the spirit.

Last week we focused on a spiritual rebirth.

We talked about how every rebirth requires real death.

And only through the death of Jesus can we experience the spiritual rebirth that opens the door for an eternal life with God.

Now, he says, You must be born of water and spirit.

What in the world does it mean to be born of water?

To them, it meant two things in the Jewish context.

The first, it meant the water of the womb.

2,000 years ago, they didn't understand all of the biology but behind conception and birthing a child.

All that they knew is that when a woman's water broke, it meant the baby was on its way.

We learned something last week that should not be shocking to you.

All of us share something in common.

As diverse and different as we are, we were all born.

Every one of us.

And we had virtually nothing to do with it.

Our parents made some magic happen.

Nine months later, we showed up.

That's it.

And right before you showed up, your mother's water broke.

The breaking of the water of the womb was synonymous with being born.

And in Nicodemus' context, what Jesus is saying is it's not enough to be born of the same womb that can trace its lineage and its DNA all the way back to your greatest grandfather Abraham.

It's not enough to just be born as one of the chosen ones.

And Nicodemus still isn't getting it.

So Jesus is gonna help him.

In verse 7, Jesus says, Do not be amazed that I told you you must be born again.

The wind, it blows where it pleases, and you hear it sound, but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going.

So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

And what Jesus is doing, and Nicodemus would get this immediately, he has a masterful understanding of Jewish history.

He's taking Nicodemus back to the most important moment in Israel's history.

He's bringing him back to the Red Sea.

Now there was Abraham, and Abraham started the nation, but eventually the nation that began was held bondage in Egypt for 400 years.

And the people who are praying in Jesus' time are hoping that God will deliver them from Rome the same way he had delivered them from Egypt hundreds of years earlier.

Eventually, God sent a man named Moses to confront the Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, the most powerful empire in the world at that time.

And God went toe to toe with the false gods of Egypt, and God won.

He asserted his dominance and forced the Pharaoh to let over a million plus free slave labor walk free to their promised land.

It's an unbelievable moment in Israel's history, but something happened.

When they were in Egypt for 400 years, they lost their identity, they lost their culture, they lost a lot of their beliefs, they lost the root of their purpose.

And all of a sudden, God sets them free.

And as they journey towards the promised land, they quickly come right up to the edge of what's called the Red Sea, an impassable body of water to try to swim across it was sure death.

If that wasn't bad enough, things got worse.

Pretty soon the Pharaoh changed his mind.

Bro, what am I doing?

Our entire workforce just walked out of the door.

Who cares if there's like some locusts in darkness every once in a while?

We gotta get them back.

He sends the Egyptian army, a far superior fighting force, to come and bring them back.

And pretty soon, this is the critical moment that Jesus is referring to when he's talking to Nicodemus.

Right here in this moment, they are on the edge of an impassable body of water.

They are pinned down by the Egyptian army.

Let me put it in a context you might understand.

Basically, there are eight guys, they just got out of their trucks, they are in flip-flops and pajama pants, all right?

They are in serious trouble.

It's basically like choose your death.

You want to drown or you want to die by the sword.

Those are their options.

For 400 years, they prayed to be set free from Egypt.

For 400 years.

And God delivered and he delivered in an unbelievable way.

And now, just days later, they face their first obstacle.

An obstacle that there seems to be no way out of.

You know, this happens to us.

All of this stuff that happened thousands of years ago, it can seem so foreign, but this happens to us.

Because sometimes we pray and we pray and we pray, and God answers our prayers, and all of a sudden our lives get so much more complicated.

And some of you got married and think that having a kid is just the easiest thing in the world, and you're watching your friends, they're not even trying to get pregnant, they're getting pregnant, and you're trying and trying and trying, and it's just not happening for you, and you pray and you pray and you pray, and maybe God answers that prayer.

Just wait four months, and you're gonna be like, God, why have you cursed me in this way?

Up all night, they won't eat their food.

It's like they're just changing diapers after diapers after diapers.

You've prayed and prayed, may you be.

Single forever, and you're like praying and praying that God would bring someone into your life and bring that connection, that that man or that woman that you've been praying for, and you're like, God, I'm I'm doing it all, man.

You know, I bought a treadmill.

I mean, I didn't, I didn't use it.

I hang my clothes up, but I bought it.

You saw me buy it, right?

An investment, and I'm on the I'm on the sights, and I'm swiping, and I'm there's no connection, right?

And you pray and you pray, and God finally brings that person into your life, and you find that now your life is so much more complicated.

It's like all of a sudden you don't own your own schedule.

All of a sudden, there's someone in your life who can do the craziest thing to you.

They can say, No.

You didn't have that problem when you were single.

And so sometimes it's uh a lot more difficult than that.

Sometimes you pray and pray for a moment and you're not really sure how you're gonna get to the other side of it.

And it can be really difficult.

And we read these promises in scripture and we read them through how we want them to work, like, God won't give you more than you can handle for the good of those who who love God.

And we're like, so so if you got me here, it's gonna be good.

And if you got me here, I can handle it.

And the truth is you're you're misunderstanding.

God won't give you more than you can handle through his strength.

God won't give you more than you can handle, not in your way with your strategy, but with how he wants to handle it.

All things work together for those who love God.

You know that verse isn't over yet, and are called according to his purposes.

And so they are trapped, and they're wondering why God, after 400 years, helped them escape only to annihilate them at the Red Sea.

And what they don't know is there's a problem they can't fix, but God can.

And it becomes the seminal moment in Israel's history.

We read about it in Exodus 14.

It says, Then Moses stretched his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back with a powerful east wind all that night and turned the sea into dry land.

So the waters were divided, the wind divided the waters.

He said in John, the wind blows where it pleases.

You hear it, but don't know where it's coming from or where it's going.

So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

The wind blew all night, and the waters were divided.

Verse 22, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with the waters like a wall to them on the right, and like a wall to them on the left.

And this is the moment coming out of Egypt that a Jewish person saw the birth of their nation once again through the waters.

You must be born of water, the water of the womb, like we all are, and you must be born of the Spirit.

And Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus, a ruler of the Pharisees, an elite of the Jewish people, at the very top of the power hierarchy in Israel, and he's blowing his mind.

He's saying, It's not enough to just have the right lineage back to your greatest grandfather Abraham, it's not enough to be a part of the chosen people who God split the seed to birth that nation.

You must also be born of the Spirit.

And this is the moment that Jesus opened the door for you and for me.

You realize this was 2,000 years ago.

You realize that it happened on the other side of the world, and we are here today as a part of the movement that John 3, 6, 18 started.

Every word of John 3.16 tells a story of the gospel.

It says, For God loved the world.

God loved the world in this way.

And as he said that in John 3.16, Nicodemus all of a sudden felt faint.

The world.

You mean God loved the Jewish world?

No, no, no.

For God loved the world in this way.

Nicodemus was like, you mean like the pagan world?

You mean like the world outside of Israel?

You mean like the Amalekites who sacrificed their children to appease false gods?

You don't mean God loved Rome.

The people occupying us who have taken away.

For God loved the world in this way, that he gave his one and only son.

Every word of this just pushes Nicodemus back on his heels.

As a good Jewish man and a ruler of their religion, he knew that to make right with God, you gave sacrifices and you gave your most precious animal.

You would take your firstborn, unblemished, spotless male lamb.

You would spill its blood to cover the sin of you and your family.

No, no, no.

God didn't give a lamb, he gave the lamb of God.

He gave his son, he gave what was most precious to him.

He gave what he didn't have Abraham give, his one and only son.

He gave it for the world, for the pagans, for those who do not believe in our enemies of God who spit in his face.

He gave his son so that, just in case you're confused, everyone.

All people, in all places, everyone who believes in him.

You know what eternal life meant to a Jewish person?

You know what eternal life meant to Nicodemus?

It meant an abundant and blessed life in the kingdom of God.

The idea that those outside of the kingdom of Israel would one day be in the kingdom of God was not only a foreign concept, it felt a lot like blasphemy.

It's the kind of things that you preach about if you want to end up on a Roman cross.

You see, Israel had a blood versus water mentality, my family and my people versus the world.

And God obviously doesn't want to bless the people outside of us because the people outside of us are enemies of us, and if they're enemies of us, then they're enemies of God.

And Jesus came and he began to flip the script.

And we have to be really careful because the church, for hundreds of years now, has with a great sense of pride said, We are the new Israel.

At Metachurch, we don't actually believe that theologically, we believe we're something brand new.

We're not something old that's that's made 2.0, or something brand new.

But for hundreds of years, the church has said, we are the new Israel.

What does it mean?

It means we are now the chosen ones.

And everyone outside of us are the pagans, the enemies of God.

And we have watched the church our entire lives repeat the same mistakes that Israel made back then.

They see the world as an occupying force, they see a culture in a world that not only often doesn't line up to biblical standards, God's rule and reign, but is often in direct opposition to it.

And because we see the world outside of the church as enemies of the church, and we see ourselves as the special chosen ones of God, if they're enemies of us, they're enemies of God.

And so what do you do?

You protect blood versus water, us, our people, our families, our church, our body, and we section ourselves off and we hide away in our stained glass cages and we judge a world outside of us that God has placed us on earth, just like he placed Abraham, just like he placed Israel, not to condemn the world outside of us, but to reach that world, to go out into that world like Jesus left heaven and came down to ours to offer himself and say, I will show you the love of God, even if I have to show you by you crucifying me for it.

That is what we are called to do as the movement called the church.

And we get it so backwards when we sit on our platforms and we point to those on the margins of society and we judge their version of sin to make ourselves feel a little bit better about it and hide and obfuscate our sin that we don't want anyone to know about.

And maybe you grew up outside of the church and it felt that way.

Well, those are those are like the chosen ones.

I don't know the lingo, I don't know the dress code.

You showed up to church one time, you were all out of place, people were side-eyeing you because they know the family you come from, they know the trouble you got into, they know about the divorces, they know about the lies that you've told.

Maybe you just didn't feel like you fit in.

You didn't know the words to the song, and everybody was judging you a little bit.

Maybe you went to one of the churches where you sit, stand, sit, stand.

You know, the church I'm talking about, sit, stand, sit, stand, sit.

And every time they were sitting, you were standing, you were standing, they were sitting, you were out of rhythm, you know, embarrassed.

A lot of people have been hurt by the church.

A lot of people have been hurt by the church.

A lot of people have been hurt by the new Israel.

Maybe you're like me, you grew up in those churches, you were the chosen one, you know.

Wasn't that fun when you were the chosen one and everyone else was terrible?

Wasn't that fun?

Until God finally confronted you and showed you that every one of your sins damns you just as much as everyone else's, and it's not about being the chosen one, about being better than anyone else.

There's not amount of right you can do or wrong that you can do.

It is only by the grace of God and the mercy of Jesus that we have any chance in hell.

And so Jesus came and was like, I'm not here to see the other nations as the enemies of God, I'm here to make the other nations the children of God.

He turned it all on its head.

Nicodemus didn't even really know what to think.

And we know eventually Nicodemus actually became a believer in Jesus.

That by the time Jesus hung on a cross, Nicodemus saw it and understood he wasn't dying for Israel, he was dying for all people and all places.

That Jesus came to open the door of salvation to us all.

Doesn't matter where you came from, doesn't matter if the world or the church world has told you that you are worthy or unworthy.

I know you're worthy because I know that your life was worth the blood of Jesus Christ.

That he came, that's what he came to prove.

Nicodemus eventually saw it clearly.

He was able to break a blood versus water mentality, my folk, my people, my family.

There was a historian in the 1800s, and he was looking at um the etymology, where the phrase blood is thicker than water comes from, and it's disputed what he found, but he became convinced that the origin of the saying not only is different than the way we take it, it's actually the opposite.

He found the origin in Gaelic traditions, and that the original phrase said the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

The exact opposite meaning that the blood of those who are bound together by a common, significant purpose binds you closer even than those who are your relatives.

The blood of the covenant.

When God called Abraham and showed him the plan to make a great nation Israel, to bring a savior, Messiah, Jesus, to bring salvation and open the doors of the kingdom of God to the whole world, he secured that promise with a covenant.

It was a covenant of blood, the blood of animals.

This was a huge part of what happened in their context in ancient times.

In Luke chapter 22, we read about Jesus the night before he died.

Luke 22 · chapter mention

He sat down and he shared a meal with those who were closest to him.

And in verse 14, it says, When the hour came, he reclined at the table and the apostles with him, and he said to them, I have fervently desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

Then he took a cup, and after giving it thanks, he said, Take this and share it among yourselves.

For I tell you, from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

And he's setting the context.

They're sharing a Passover meal, he's pointing them back to the original covenant that started the nation, the chosen people of God.

In verse 19, he took the bread, he gave thanks, he broke it, gave it to them, and said, This is my body which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

And in the same way, he also took the cup after supper and said, This cup is the new covenant.

This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.

Not the blood of a lamb, the blood of the perfect lamb of God.

A covenant always requires blood.

And Jesus, last week we saw, when Jesus died, he offered us a new birth.

And also, when Jesus died, he brought us in to a new covenant.

The first covenant was about a people in a place, the people of Israel in the holy land of God.

The new covenant opened the door to all people in all places, to the pagan nations, to the enemies of God, to those who were ignorant of all that he has done for them, to those who have lived like hell, but God said are deserving of heaven.

And I don't know your backstory.

I don't know what hurts or wounds you're bringing in today.

Chances are many of you have church hurt.

You've been damaged by people in positions of spiritual authority over you.

And it's very easy and very understandable to project that onto God and to decide that you have no interest.

And I want you to see today in John chapter 3 that when God says the world, he means the world.

John 3 · chapter mention

When he says everyone, he means everyone.

And we get it wrong all the time.

And the church is run by broken, flawed people.

But we serve a perfect and holy God, a God who opened the door for you and whose blood that he shed on your behalf has the power to forgive you of any sin.

It doesn't matter how serious, it doesn't matter the consequences, maybe that you are still living out today, doesn't matter how many people you have hurt.

God sees it all.

And God loved the world in this way.

Even though he knew you, even though he knew how often you'd go astray, even though he knew how many times I would sin against him, he loved me so much that he gave his son for me.

He brought us in to a new promise, a new covenant.

He said in Luke 22, This is my body given for you.

And when you eat it, you remember what I have done.

This is the blood of the new covenant, the blood that was shed to open the door of salvation to you and to me.

There's a chance that someone in the room has a church wound going back to communion.

You showed up and you weren't a member or you didn't know all the unwritten rules.

At that point, you hadn't put your faith in Jesus.

And when everyone else got the bread and everyone else got the drink, they said, No, no, no, no.

This isn't for everyone.

And so you got to sit in shame while everyone else got to commune with God.

So here's how we think about it.

This is for everyone.

This is to remember what Jesus did.

And if you've put your faith in Jesus, then you have a relationship with God and you get to commune with God.

It is a communion.

And if you haven't, then you take, you take this and really reflect.

And maybe what this is for you is a pre union.

This is you taking another step, opening yourself up to another experience, another way of you seeking God and thinking about what it means if there actually is a God who came to the earth and died so that you could live.

And so we take this together.

It says, He took the bread.

These are a little tricky, but if you just kind of gently fold back on the cellophane on top, he took the bread, he gave it to them, and he said, This is my body which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Take and eat.

As you eat the bread, think about his body.

Think about what he went through.

Think about the fact that every whip of the nine tails, every nail, the crown of thorns, it was meant for you, it was meant for me.

It was taken by Jesus.

In the same way, he took the cup after supper and he said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Take it and remember me.

You may drink now.

And as you commune, let me pray for you.

God, we thank you.

We thank you for your love.

Jesus, we thank you for your body given for us.

We thank you for your life lived for us.

God, we thank you that you came and you tore down any barrier between us and you, that you came and you opened the door for sinners just like me.

Nicodemus couldn't see it.

He couldn't see that something new was happening.

He was once again crammed down between Rome and death, between the Red Sea and Egypt, between now and forever.

And he couldn't see it.

He could only handle it his way, he could only view it his way.

And God, you've come to do something new in our lives.

And I pray we would open ourselves up to it.

God, anyone who doesn't know you, that they would seek you genuinely.

We believe your spirit's here, that it's moving in this room, that it is pulling at hearts, that it is convicting our minds.

And I pray, God, for the person watching online who you're doing work in their hearts right now, that we would do business with you, that we would leave here having wrestled with what it means to put our faith in Jesus, what it means to enter into a new covenant.

God, we love you, we worship you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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And I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.