Rich Young Ruler

Good morning.

Today's reading is from the book of Mark, chapter 10, 17 through 31.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good?

No one is good except God alone.

You know the commandments.

Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.

And he said to him, Teacher, all these things I have kept for my youth.

And Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, You lack one thing.

Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have, and you will have treasure in heaven.

And come, follow me.

Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.

And the disciples were amazed at his words, but Jesus said to them again, Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

And they were exceedingly astonished and said to him, Then who can be saved?

Jesus looked at them and said, With man it is impossible, but with God, but not with God, for all things are possible with God.

Peter began to say to him, See, we have left everything and followed you.

Jesus said, Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers, or sisters, or mother or father, or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.

But many who are first will be last in the last first.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Uh I'm really looking, I've really been looking forward to this today.

Uh to gather in the mornings and then this morning and then to gather uh this evening for our five-year celebration.

That is uh um, yeah, as Zach is saying, it's just it just feels so wonderful to reflect on and see God's care for us and for our church over these past five years.

Um uh plus you know, we get to try being like a truly reformed church with a morning service and an evening service.

So watch out.

Um today we are looking at the story of the rich young ruler.

And it's a story that is uh prescient and heartbreaking, and uh a uh uh a look at what it means to come to Christ with uh a world of values that we've constructed and hold those values up against Christ Himself, the preciousness, the goodness of who he is.

And we realize that we are confronted with an impossible choice to make, uh, to lay down all of the values that we had built up for Christ Himself, that we might receive the one true and good salvation.

Let's pray and we'll look at this story.

Holy Father, I thank you for our church.

I thank you for the the voices that come to you in praise.

I thank you that we might rejoice, that us sinners can come and rejoice.

Lord, that that your your pity and your love towards us caused you to sacrifice that that most precious sacrifice of your son, that sinners like us might come to you by his blood in the freedom of grace that he offers.

Lord, who who are we that we might come into your presence?

And yet you have promised to inhabit our praises.

You've called us into your church, that we might see you.

Lord, this is a precious thing, and I and I pray that we would we would not miss it this morning.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Over the past couple of weeks, we've seen something like a household pattern in the stories that we've uh looked at with Jesus.

He uh had a discussion about marriage uh when he was confronted by some Pharisees who wanted to kind of uh catch him in, actually Sadducees who wanted to catch him in a trap about what marriage means.

Uh and the disciples, upon seeing this, they are astonished at Jesus' teaching about marriage, about the the level of um uh the the covenantal frame built into creation that that Jesus describes marriage as.

And when the disciples are confronted with that, they they say, uh perhaps it's better to not get married.

And then we saw Jesus uh uh blessing children as they were brought to him.

And uh the disciples try and stop the children from being brought to Jesus, and then Jesus gives them this other shocking teaching, which is that unless you are like one of these children, then you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

And the disciples are astonished once again.

And this story is about possession.

So we see marriage, children, possessions, these are the central experiences of the human life.

And both of these teachings draw, or each of these teachings in different ways draw the disciples to this astonishment at what Jesus is saying.

And what they come to this morning, as we'll see in the interaction with the rich young ruler, the disciples say to Jesus, then who can be saved?

Until we see the until we see the gospel, until we're brought to that question, who can be saved?

We uh don't understand the gospel.

Jesus brings this rich young ruler to that question, and then he wants to make sure that the disciples see it, see clearly what they've witnessed in the despair of the young man.

And uh they're brought to this question, then who can be saved?

That's the question we're gonna be looking at in detail this morning.

So let's go ahead and get into our text.

Mark 10, 17 to 31.

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

So Matthew calls him young.

Luke calls him a ruler, and they all call him rich.

Not only are those the opening lyrics on my new EP, Matthew calls him young.

Luke calls him a ruler, they all call him rich.

That's cool, right?

It's called Get Rich or Die in Christ.

They are should have been the title of the sermon, but they that's why we call him the rich young ruler.

It's not uh it's a term across the gospels.

Uh this man is likely a ruler in his local synagogue.

He has some position of authority in his local synagogue, and we know that he has great possessions, and and he's a young man.

So he has all of these things.

He has this uh uh prestige, he has wealth, and he has even great potential.

And yet he uh as Jesus is about to set out from from Capernaum, he uh perhaps gets news that Jesus is leaving, and so he runs.

And he runs to Jesus to ask this urgent question.

I've gotta ask him before he leaves, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

On the outside, the man is missing nothing.

But inside, we can see by this question, he carries around in himself this deep anxiety and this concern.

Is my life sufficient?

Is my life sufficient for an eternity?

Can my life achieve with all that I have and all that I've done, is my life able to achieve a true goodness that I know will last?

Am I able to achieve a righteousness or a blessedness before God that I could depend upon, that might I could know that it is so secure in the future, that it might reach back in time to this present moment and relieve this constant internal anxiety that I have that says it's not sufficient, I won't be able to attain, I won't measure up.

So the question is not just a question of will I go to heaven when I die?

It's not just a future question.

It's also a question of a present security.

That's what causes the man to run.

He runs up to Jesus with this question, will I inherit eternal life?

Because inside of his own heart, he is not secure.

He does not have a trust and a true hope in the Lord.

Hope in Scripture, the Christian hope is not like we use the word hope, some vague, like I hope it happens.

It is a hope that is secure, it's absolute.

I know this will take place, and therefore I have a peace within me now.

So it's really this question about how is the man valuing his life?

And in one sense, he has this high value of his life, and in another sense, he has this internal anxiety that what he's been able to achieve is just not enough.

And so he's torn.

And so Jesus, understanding that the question is a question of values and of how he is valuing his life, he he goes right from the very beginning, right to a question of value.

So here's what Jesus says.

Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good?

No one is good except God alone.

Now, this may be a strange strange point to start at, you might sense, for for Jesus.

In fact, it might just be like a throwaway, like one of those petty things that Jesus was always correcting, you know, in the rest of Scripture.

That's not a character trait of Jesus, by the way.

That's He uh He's doing something intentional here.

He's what he's saying is look, I know that what you mean by good, you you don't think that I'm the Son of God.

So when you're calling me good, you're exposing this thin superficial assessment of what goodness is.

And what I'm show what I'm here to show you is that and he's he just says it explicitly.

The first thing that he says is goodness, the standard of goodness, is God.

So why do you call me good?

You don't he Jesus is not saying something like, don't call me good, I'm I'm not God.

He almost never says things like that.

Jesus is saying, you don't think that I'm God.

You think I'm a good teacher.

You know, colloquially good.

It's the last time I preach with that word.

In the common vernacular, the vulgar speech of the people.

You're calling me good.

But no one is good except God alone.

Okay, so so Jesus is already teasing apart what's going on in the man's heart.

The man has this super this superficial assessment of what goodness is.

And so he is able to stand back from his life and say, in in all of the of the markers that are meaningful to him, he's able to say, I am leading a good life.

I am good.

And I can look and I can assess what goodness is, and this is a good teacher, but beneath that superficial level, the man is haunted.

He is haunted by this idea that perhaps he's not really good enough.

Perhaps his good his standard of goodness is as superficial as he knows it is.

And he might meet someone who knows the real standard of goodness.

And that's what the question is about.

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

How can I know that in the end, if I meet the real standard of goodness, I won't be humiliated.

I won't be found out, that this superficial standard of goodness that I've been carrying around with me, using to justify myself, won't be found wanting.

That's why the man's running.

He's running because he's haunted.

So now that Jesus has shifted the conversation from just what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And he's gone to the heart of the matter, which is a question about what you what do you mean when you say good?

What are your standards of assessment for what goodness is?

Now Jesus introduces the standard.

And he makes the question a question about the law.

Where can we go that we might be accurately assessed?

Where can we go that we might know the mind of God to know what it is to be a justified human?

That we've lived rightly, that our lives have measured up.

Well, this is the purpose of the law.

The purpose of the law is to expose the human heart to itself so that it might be revealed, so that you might have no question, I have not measured up to the standard.

This is one of the intentions of the law, why it is given to us.

So Jesus introduces the law as he engages with the man's question.

In Mark 10, 19, he says, You know the commandments, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.

Now, what's interesting is that Jesus starts at what's called the second table of the law.

There's uh two tables of the law, two tablets, you know.

And there's uh the first table is all about our uh how it is that we interact with God directly in our relationship with God.

The second table is more horizontal, and these are more external.

And Jesus chooses just commandments that could be assessed just externally.

You know, these types of sins, we imagine they could be um uh uh photographed or documented by a camera.

They're they're things that could be witnessed and known about yourself in a sort of objective way.

And those are the commandments that Jesus uses.

He doesn't start with commandment one and say, you should have no other gods before me.

That's uh a heart-level commandment.

You couldn't necessarily take a picture of that.

But he and he also leaves out the last, the bookend of the Ten Commandments, which is covetousness, which is something that takes place within the heart.

So he's he's in a sense baiting the man in to continue this external assessment of himself.

He's he wants to reveal this dual standard that's operating in the man's heart.

The thin, superficial goodness that the man can use to, in a sense, deceive himself into thinking that he's good.

But in doing so, he's trying to show that look, the reason you're running to me is because you know that's insufficient.

Because consider your heart.

If that were sufficient, then you would have been able to, you would have been able to rest with regards to what's coming.

You would have been able to find rest with regards to the judgment day, to this hope.

Yes, I will inherit eternal life, and yet here you are running to me.

So the man, the man takes the bait in a sense, for this exposure that Christ is doing.

And he said to him, Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.

So the man has uh never murdered, he has not committed adultery, he has not stolen, he is not borne false witness, he is not defrauded, he has not dishonored his father and his mother by the man's assessment.

Uh at which point Jesus was, you know, the disciples perhaps were thinking they probably they probably weren't, but like, we gotta get him a recording of the Sermon on the Mount.

And he might have found something in his own assessment that the law is not operating at the superficial level that the man hopes it might be.

But if he has felt anger in his heart towards someone, then he is murdered.

If he has lusted after a woman in his heart, then he has committed adultery.

Perhaps he is not, as it was often narrowly interpreted, just gotten on a stand and uh borne false witness about a neighbor.

But we see here that what Christ is exposing is he is living at a perpetual level of self-deception.

Because in himself, he has this dual standard.

One revealed by him saying, good teacher.

The other revealed by his understanding that he has fulfilled the law since his youth by this superficial standard that he hopes might be true.

He is righteous.

But if you think you're righteous, you don't come running asking how it is you might inherit eternal life.

You see, the the duality in the man's heart is already betrayed by his initial question.

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

That question is not plaguing you if you think that your standard of righteousness truly is sufficient.

And if not at some level, you know I'm operating at a level of self-deception here.

And that's what the anxiety in the man's heart is.

It's the self-deception that he's operating with.

The superficial thin standard of goodness that he hopes is true.

Jesus might have said, after he said, Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.

And Jesus could have just said, Then why run to me and ask?

Then what is this fear in your heart?

Jesus is exposing that there is a standard of goodness, a real standard of goodness, that the man knows.

He knows.

And all else in his life is just a pattern, a practice of self-deception to ignore the pain of the standard that he knows.

So Jesus takes him right to the center of his heart.

He takes him to the point to expose that you know that there's a real standard.

And so he.

Offers the man eternal life.

Verses 21 through 22, and Jesus looked at him, and excuse me, and Jesus looking at him loved him and said to him, You lack one thing.

Go sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.

Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

Now let's just let's uh the way that Mark tells the story is he's he three times he brings attention to Jesus' eyes in the story, where Jesus is looking.

And this is the first time where Jesus, uh, about to, you know, land this direct hit, looks the man right in the eyes, and he loves him.

Now, the commentators that I read were were people are mixed with what to do with Jesus loving the man.

And I think the mixture shows that like we don't want Jesus to love him until he's come back to Jesus.

And yet, right before the man turns down the offer of Christ, Jesus looks at him and he loves him.

If you were to if if this character were introduced in a movie, you know, here's a here's uh this this side character who's going to come in and confront Jesus, our main character.

He's rich, he's youthful, attractive, he's got a position of prestige in the community.

He probably wears vineyard vines.

He thinks that like a regatta is a viable sport for him, you know, things like that.

What I'm saying is this is not a this is a character that we would look at and we would think, okay, I'm being told to kind of resent them.

Oh, and by the way, he thinks he's perfectly righteous.

You know, our hearts interact with a character like that.

And we we start to resent them.

This person just thinks they're better than me.

Jesus is not put off by the man's wealth.

He's not put off by the man's station, he's not put off by any of those things.

Any more than he is put off by anyone else's need or anyone's poverty.

Christ is different than us.

He looks at him and he loves him.

Because of the depth of his love towards him, he brings him to this point in his heart.

And he says, You lack one thing, go sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.

What he's saying is, would you lay down all that you think is good in order to receive the true goodness?

And he goes right to this part of the man's heart that that had captured him so completely.

You know, Jesus is not a uh oh this is this is Jesus is not offering a universal command here.

You know, this man was rich, but he was probably not as rich as Abraham or Jacob when he left Laban.

And he didn't ask any of those men to sell all that they had and give to the poor and then come follow me.

Jesus is doing a targeted action here where he's saying, I know where your heart truly lies.

I know what it is you really treasure, and what it is you really treasure, what what it is that that justifies your life, that makes you consider yourself a valid person, that you that you think is the true demonstration of your goodness, it's your wealth.

It's your possessions.

You've been taken in by them.

When it really comes down to the heart level, that's where your hope lies.

And so what I'm what Jesus is saying is all of the assessment of that goodness, you need to lay down.

And then you might see that the real goodness, the one that haunts your life, the one that caused you to run up to me, the one you think might be really there, and once it's really there and really exposed, would show you don't measure up.

Well, you'd be able to receive that goodness.

But you can't have them both.

Jesus is, in a sense, taking the man to the first commandment.

And he's saying, You shall have no other gods before me.

And right now you do.

And the other God that you have before me, you might not believe it if I told you, it's your possessions.

You've been taken captive by them.

And they are deceitful, and you believe them.

But if you lay that down, then you might see there is a there is a real goodness that you might take up.

And the real goodness that you might take up is so good it will amount to eternal life.

Come follow me.

I'll give it to you.

We see him bring him to the first commandment, and we see Jesus expose this reality of the gospel, which is that if you make any addition to Christ, if you try and bring in with you any other element of your justification, then you don't receive Christ.

What the man, the man, the man kind of he wants to have.

He wants this peace, this present peace of mind that would that would know I am saved.

But he wants to have that peace in this way.

What you have done and the way that you have lived, even the greatness of your possessions, are evidence of your goodness.

And because of your goodness, your life is justified before God.

You see, he doesn't what's actually going on there is the man will be anything but saved.

He is willing to do whatever it takes that he might earn it.

He is willing to do nearly anything to show that his standard of goodness, which we which he has developed for himself, as superficial and thin as it may be, he is sufficient to attain it.

And so he doesn't want to be saved.

He'll do anything but be saved.

What he wants is to measure up.

And then once he knows that he has measured up, he thinks it's just around the corner.

Once I know I've measured up, then that piece of eternal life will come, will come back to my present moment.

And maybe I won't have to run anymore to find someone who might look at me and say, It is sufficient.

You have measured up.

He doesn't want the goodness of God.

He wants the standard of his own goodness to be good enough.

That's what he wants.

And so that's why when he looks at Christ, he looks at this offer of Christ, and he holds in his hand his great possessions, which tell him things about himself.

Look at the blessedness of God that is on my life.

Look at my competence.

Look at my knowledge and skill and commitment.

And he holds his wealth in a way that tells him all of those things about himself.

It's like a God, where it makes demands of you, live in this certain way, and then it as a reward for the for living up to the demands that I've made about you, I will tell you who you are.

That's what we ask of gods.

And then when I tell you who you are, you will be justified in my presence, and you might finally rest and see my life because of the way that I've lived it is sufficient.

But the man is unable to part with his own standard of goodness.

And because he's unable to part with his own standard of goodness, because the one thing that he won't bring to the table to be saved is that is a recognition that he needs to be saved.

This is what he won't bring.

If he lets go of his possessions and in the self-justification that they offer him in his own heart, then he's too fearful that he will be one who just needs to be saved.

So the man walks away and he's sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

You imagine that walk.

He ran up to Jesus because the anxiety had built.

And now he just he just walks away.

And he and he must go and he goes back and he must be thinking.

Perhaps perhaps I I can I can make my my self-deception really bring this peace into my heart.

Perhaps if I just get more.

And you've probably heard or read some gymnastics about this verse, where like the eye of a needle is actually a small gate into the city that a camel, in order to enter it, had to kneel down to be able to enter this section of the gate.

That's not true.

That comes from nowhere.

The analogy that Jesus is making is the eye of a threading needle.

And he says it's easier for a camel to enter the eye of a threading needle than it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

Now, do you know how you get a camel through a threading needle?

You don't.

That's right.

Because the analogy that Jesus is making is not you must kneel down.

And this doorway is slightly more difficult than other gates.

What Jesus is saying is it's impossible.

And I know that Jesus is saying it's impossible, because in the next verse he says, it's impossible.

Which makes me think that he was developing an analogy to show that it's an impossible thing to do.

Mark 10, 26 to 27.

The disciples heard this and they were exceedingly astonished and said to him, Then who can be saved?

They were exceedingly astonished.

Who can be saved?

They looked at this man, they heard the interaction, and they they see the Jesus, what what they're hearing Jesus say is that it's like the opposite of what Jesus was saying with the children.

The inverse, rather, because it's the same.

It's not the opposite.

What Jesus is saying with the children is those who will enter the kingdom are the least.

And now he's saying, those who are the most can't get in.

And so what the disciples are hearing, it's like Jesus is saying, the most blessed aren't.

Those who have the the those who, if you look at and you see they have they are the most righteous, they have the greatest reason to consider that they are the most saved, those who have most attained the glory that has been promised them, those who who the the the hand of blessedness is most on are not.

And so the disciples hear this, they're astonished.

They say, then who can be saved?

If all who have measured up can't be saved, then who can be saved?

This is what we must see to understand the gospel.

With man, oh, we see Jesus' eyes again.

Verse twenty-seven, Jesus looked at them just like he looked at the rich young ruler, and said, With man it is impossible, but not with God.

For all things are possible with God, we must understand that the pattern of our salvation is absolutely antithetical to earning our position with God.

And whenever we creep into a mode that says, see, I can attain this presence with the Lord, whenever we start to justify ourselves before God, then we are participating in a superficial reading of goodness.

Because we are haunted and horrified of coming face to face with the goodness of God.

Because when we come face to face with the goodness of God, we find that we are utterly humiliated.

Because none is righteous.

No, not one.

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

He has bound us all up in sin that he might show grace to all.

Because here is the pattern of our salvation.

It is not that we attain such a glory before God and offer it to him, that he would then recognize our glory and welcome us into eternal life.

That's the pattern that the man wants.

Validate what I think is good.

Tell me that I have measured up to my own standard of goodness.

Recognize my glory before God, and then I will be glorified forever.

It is the opposite.

God says, I will demonstrate my glory to you by saving you, sinner, at great cost to myself, in a way that is free to you.

And what you must do to receive it is just receive it.

And then what you will see is my glory.

God is the one who is mighty to save, and he saves sinners.

And so, what do you need to be saved by the Lord?

It is the one thing that the rich young ruler didn't have and was not willing to acquire, which was need before the Lord.

I'll do anything but need salvation.

Well, then you will not have it.

Wealth is particularly deceitful, Jesus teaches us here.

And the reason for the particular deceitfulness of wealth, I think, is it's something like the world is under a curse.

There is toil, and by the sweat of our brow, we make it through this life.

And wealth, it can, it's described in scripture as deceitful.

And I think the deceitfulness of riches is something like this the curse, it can be removed.

Wealth provides a power to insulate from the toil and the sweat of the brow.

Wealth provides this sense of An ability to accomplish anything that you truly desire, and you will be able to remake the world in the image that is attuned to you so that so that the curse will be removed.

And look, you're close.

You just need a little, a little more.

And once you have a little more, then all the pains of this toil that you've been experiencing will be able to be removed.

It it operates like a savior in that way.

I was listening to a podcast earlier this week, and they were interviewing a man who had gained a group of friends that are like the super rich, you know, the the those who are very rich, as they call themselves, in their meetings together when they plan for the rest of us to be happy and own nothing.

And the he was asked, what do we not know about them?

And he said, the big secret of the super rich is that they feel powerless.

It's deceitful, these riches.

Don't be deceived.

When you recognize that you are the type of thing that is bound up in sin and needs to be saved, then you can lay down that false standard of goodness that you know you can't really trust.

In the uttermost depths of your soul, you know you can't really trust it.

God is saying, then don't.

Trust the salvation of Christ.

Come to it.

You need to be saved.

This is our hope in Christ.

He bids us come follow him, lay down the falseness of our standards of goodness that we've developed for ourselves, take on his.

That's a frightful thing because it's an exposing thing to come up to his perfection and realize you don't attain it.

Oh, but he desires to make his glory known in saving people like you.

Saving people like us.

And then we see what's really good.

And we no longer live for ourselves, but we live to the praise of the one who laid down his life that sinners like us might be saved.

Are there any questions today, Tim?

How rich is too rich?

Often the church talks about this story as though it is a foregone conclusion that the ruler is not saved.

But we don't know the end of this ruler's story.

Is it possible he is in fact in heaven?

Oh yeah, it's definitely possible.

But it's true, we don't know the end.

We don't know the end of the ruler's story.

We don't know.

They didn't in this instance.

And under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I think the reason is plain.

We are meant to be confronted with the man's decision.

So that you, the hearer, like the disciples, are confronted with your decision.

Would you lay it down to have Christ alone?

And if you won't, you get no Christ.

So we are confronted with that very same question in our hearts today.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11, starting in verse 23, he says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

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

Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Come, all you who are hungry, and take by take the bread of life for no cost.

Come, you who are thirsty.

Drink from a well of living water where you'll never be thirsty again.

But the only way to receive it is just as a gift.

It must be received freely.

That's humiliating.

But it is the way of our participation in the goodness of God.

How good is he, that he would lay down his life that we might be saved.

Holy Father, I pray that as we partake in this communion, that we would recognize the freedom of the gospel.

Lord, but as we recognize the freedom of the gospel, I pray that you would bring into our hearts those other standards of goodness that we live by as means of justifying ourselves that become rivals with you.

The deceit that we fall under, that show that allow us to imagine that we're we're close to being righteous enough, we're close to being prosperous enough, that we might be safe and secure.

Lord, I pray that you would amplify that anxiety in the hearts of us who find our security there, that we might run like the man did to Jesus and say, What must I do to be saved?

And hear Jesus say, just come follow me, lay down those other thin, superficial standards, confront the danger of the standard which exposes you as one who needs to be saved and cannot save himself.

Lord, let us come and eat and partake of this meal, freely bought, freely given, and celebrate the one who saves us.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.