Sarah is Promised Isaac

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Genesis seventeen, verses fifteen to twenty-one.

And God said to Abraham, As for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.

I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her.

I will bless her, and she shall become nations.

Kings of peoples shall come from her.

Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?

Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?

And Abraham said to God, Oh, that Ishmael might live before you.

God said, No, but Sarah, your wife, shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac.

I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.

As for Ishmael, I have heard you.

Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly.

He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation.

But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, with Sarah, whom whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.

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.

Today is Palm Sunday, and this is the beginning of Holy Week.

This is the most joyful week in our uh in uh Christianity.

So this week Jesus rode in on a donkey into Jerusalem, and uh he set his face towards Jerusalem, uh heading towards his crucifixion on Friday, and then what we'll celebrate next Sunday is his resurrection on Easter Sunday.

So uh yeah, this is a joyful time and uh in our church calendar, and uh yeah, we we're looking forward to gathering together next Sunday.

Each Sunday in the church is like a little slice of Easter uh as we gather together on Sunday morning remembering his resurrection.

But next Sunday it's like the whole pie.

So uh we've got two services next Sunday, one at 9:30, like this service, and another service at 11.

And the uh in between those services, we're going to have an Easter egg hunt at 10:30.

So, got it?

So there's a 9:30 service or an 11 o'clock service.

You can choose which one to come to, but no matter which one of those services you come to, you're gonna want to be a part of the halftime show, which is an Easter egg hunt on the front lawn.

And we got a uh uh we've got fences for the children, not like for each child.

One fence that will keep all of the children contained from the road.

So you can just let them go in there.

Um they don't even have to be on leash.

Uh today is right after the service is our uh oh, also on Friday is Good Friday.

And so uh we'd love for you to join us Friday evening at 6 p.m.

We'll have a Good Friday service in here, and it's a family service, and it's uh really just like a Good Friday movement.

So we're gonna be moving through the story of Good Friday in remembrance of the atonement uh in the crucifixion.

Uh also today is a members' meeting immediately following the service.

So if you are a member at Redemption Church, stick around after the service.

We're gonna be right in here, and from 11 to noon we'll meet.

We've got some big news, some exciting things to talk about.

Uh so yeah, uh, if you're a member, we'll see you there.

All right.

Good announcements, we made it.

Let's pray and uh preach the Bible.

Holy Father, we praise you for a beautiful morning.

Lord, for a week that uh was full of the deepest terror that's imaginable for you, uh, that we look back on with such joy uh because uh of the work that you accomplished for us.

Lord, you are a surprising God.

I pray that you would open our hearts to be able to see you in a new way this morning, in the way that you've revealed yourself to us in Scripture.

Lord, that our concept of you might be made more accurate and expanded towards a more glorious picture of who you truly are.

Lord, open our eyes to see that this morning in your word.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So uh there's this great scene in the movie The Prestige.

Does anybody know that movie?

Okay, cool.

All the dudes are like, yep.

And it it's a uh uh there's these two rival magicians, which come on, who doesn't want to see that?

And they uh well one of them uh it thinks that he has captured the diary to the other his rival of his rival magician that'll be fooled of all his secrets so that he'll be able to learn those tricks and then outperform him.

And there's this amazing scene, this movie's like 12 years old, so if it's spoiled, come on, you've had time.

The uh uh he's reading the diary and he's like, oh my gosh, I'm uncovering all these secrets.

And then while he's reading it, he gets addressed by name in the diary, and he says, and he's reading it, and it's like, I know you're reading this, and Gier's this diary was the trick all along.

You've been tricked.

And so he's reading it and he thinks the world is one way.

And then as he's reading it, he gets addressed by name, and he realizes, oh my goodness, my whole concept of the world has totally shifted.

I thought I was the one with the upper hand.

It turned out just my reading it has made this guy the one with the upper hand.

He gets addressed by name in what he's reading, and all of a sudden what he's reading completely changes.

It's a really cool scene.

Now, I I think that it's a wonderful analogy for what reading scripture is like.

So many of us read it and we think that we're approaching one concept, but then we become addressed by name in the scriptures.

And we and the Holy Spirit takes this word and applies it directly to our lives, directly to our story, and we realize this this is actually painting a whole new picture of the world.

I'm not just learning something about an ancient culture, I'm not just learning something about an event that took place 2,000 years ago.

I'm learning something about the very nature of the reality that I inhabit.

John Calvin used this great analogy for scripture.

He describes scripture as like a pair of glasses that you put on.

And when you put on the glasses, it allows you to see the world, like corrective lenses.

You guys are familiar with glasses, like Warby Parker, that whole thing.

They're very trendy.

And they are Benjamin Franklin, bifocals, for those of you.

Uh they uh you put them on and it allows you to see reality clearly.

You know, glasses, if they it sometimes we think of scripture, it's like you put them on and they're like rose-colored glasses, right?

And it and it would tint the world a little out of reality, but something a bit more pleasant.

But the true analogy is they're like corrective lenses, right?

They you put them on and all of a sudden something that was unclear in the world becomes the reality that you're able to see clearly.

And that's that's that's when reading the Bible, all of a sudden you're you're encountering the reality of it.

I think we enter in and we'll have this concept of scripture that we're reading it with, to where it's something that's kind of distant from us.

And uh something that can be stood off and analyzed.

Uh we might think of it like, okay, what is scripture really?

Well, it's this text that's been filtered through generations of people.

And in the filtering, probably the best wisdom has risen to the top.

And so what I'm really reading is a well-filtered human expression of some of the greatest wisdom in the world.

And that's something that you can engage with or interact with at will, uh, take from or leave behind.

But scripture reveals itself to us not as man's wisdom filtered through time, as wonderful as that may be.

It reveals itself to us as God's self-revelation, God's own words transcendently revealed to us, so that we are able to look in, peer behind what are the foundations of our existence.

Who is the God that stands behind it all?

That's what we're able to see when we look at the scriptures.

And what's amazing is when we look at scriptures, we find that they're incredibly surprising.

God is not someone that we could uh deduce, or he's not someone that we could come up with, but instead, each turn, each new event reveals that he's someone that's deeply surprising.

God isn't intuitive.

He's very different from us.

And so he's someone that needs to, that we need to have revealed to us.

This may sound hyperbolic, but it isn't.

That the the depths of existence are more fully revealed in scripture than they would be than they are at the splitting of the atom.

The heights of existence are more complete in what we're headed towards than the cosmic background radiation.

In understanding the narratives of scripture, we are being shown the depths of the reality that we inhabit.

So in today's story, we're going to see these three attributes of God demonstrated to us.

And it I hope that you start to hear your name echo in these texts and realize I'm actually being shown at the very fabric of existence here.

God Himself, my creator, is showing himself to me in this word.

We're going to see the kindness of God, the surprise of God, and the mystery of God.

His kindness, his surprising nature, and the mystery that he reveals and draws us into.

First, the kindness of God.

This is Genesis 17, 15 to 16.

And God said to Abraham, As for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.

I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her.

Now, why is this revealing the unique kindness of the Lord?

We've been in Genesis 17 for a couple of weeks now, and what we've seen throughout this whole story of Genesis is this wrestling back and forth in Abraham's heart and in Sarah's heart about this promise that they've been given by the Lord, and the promises that God will give them offspring and land for that offspring to inherit, and yet they remain childless.

Now, in chapter 16, we saw Abram and Sarai conspire together off of this idea that Sarai had to take into her own hands this promise of God.

They hadn't yet received offspring.

And as they continue to age, the likelihood of them being able to conceive becomes less and less and less, at this point, seeming like a physical impossibility.

And so they devise a plan.

And Sarai's plan was to break their marriage covenant and give to Abram her servant, a woman named Hagar.

And Abram would sleep with Hagar and conceive, and then the child that they had by the servant, Sarai would take as her own offspring.

And it thus they would be able to take this promise of God and they would be able to fulfill it for themselves on their own behalf.

But in doing so, they would have to step outside of the very guidance and wisdom of God.

This act to manifest the promise of God is a breaking of faithfulness towards God.

And yet, right on the heels of this event, after having, after Hagar does conceive, and Ishmael, who is born of that, is born, contempt grows through their whole family.

And so that they all become resentful of each other.

And we see these victims of Hagar and Ishmael that are ostracized from the family, who God goes and draws back in.

We see this collapse that takes place socially and familiar and in their own hearts because of their breaking of faithfulness to the Lord's promises.

But right on the heels of that, God offers this promise to Abraham and to Sarah.

He comes in and here to Sarah is what we're looking at this morning.

Sarah receives this new level of promise from the Lord, not right on the heels of her obedience, but right on the heels of her disobedience.

This is why we are beginning to see this gratuitous kindness of the Lord.

God, in seeing their disobedience, does not remove his promise, but in fact he doubles down on it.

Last week we saw, last couple of weeks, actually, we saw Abram had his name changed to Abraham.

Now the same promise, the same structure is given to Sarai, Abram's wife.

And the promise is that her in the same shape, her identity is changed and expanded.

She shall no longer be called Sarai, but Sarah.

Now, this is just the removal of one Hebrew letter, which works as a possessive type of letter.

So uh Sarai means princess.

But it's better phrased as uh my princess or their princess.

There's some sort of a boundary, a possessive boundary around the term princess in the name Sarai.

But in the name Sarah, that possessive boundary is removed.

And so she becomes sort of this, I don't know, meta princess above all princesses.

She is she is no longer, it's like we don't say the iPhone, we just say iPhone.

I think that's funny.

Let me check iPhone.

Uh but we there's uh she is no longer like their princess or the princess over those things.

She's princess.

She she is the wholeness of the term.

Because what will come from her and her offspring will be the king of all kings.

There's this expansiveness in the promise that God gives to her, even just in her name.

Promises in the same language that Abram has promised, Sarai is promised, or now Sarah is promised that she'll be king, that kings and nations will come from her.

It's just so important for us to see this.

At what point in their lives was this promise given to them?

In chapter 17, the beauty of this promise is given.

In chapter 16 is a whole chapter just about their rebellion.

So what draws this promise of God out of him?

What draws this blessing out of God?

There is no drawing it out of God.

There is no drawing of the blessing out of God.

It is flowing freely from God alone.

Do you see the one-directional nature of his grace towards them?

God is not standing up there and saying, like, okay, they these one these this couple, uh, because of their continued obedience, I'm going to reaffirm my blessing towards them.

No, there is no desert, uh, like deservedness in the equation.

This is freely flowing from God's heart to them.

Listen to what John Calvin says about this.

Their united fault did not prevent God from making it known to them that he was about to give them that seed, from the expectation of which they had, in a manner, cut themselves off.

Whence the gratuitous kindness of God shines the more clearly, because although men impede the course of it by obstacles of their own, it nevertheless comes to them.

In this we are plumbing the depths of reality.

We're plumbing the depths of the heart of God.

And when you look at who God has revealed himself to be in Scripture, and you look at the depths of his heart, you are encountering an infinite kindness.

Now, uh some of you walked in here today, barely making it in.

As you might have thought, uh, like like Abraham and Sarah would have had good reason to think, you know, uh uh uh the expectation of kindness that I would receive from God, I've cut myself off from.

But that is precisely where God's kindness shines the most clearly.

That's precisely where we are shown just how gratuitous His kindness really is, right in that space, in the undeservedness.

That is the shape of God's heart.

And this brings us to this response of the surprise of seeing God for who he truly is, the surprising nature of encountering a God where we are plumbing the where we plumb the depths of kindness.

This is Abraham's response to hearing this promise to Sarai, Sarah.

Sorry, her name just changed.

Genesis 17, 17.

Look at the surprise of God now, seeing his kindness.

Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?

Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?

Now, how do we interpret this moment, this laughter?

Well, first we see the posture.

Abraham falls on his face before the Lord.

This is a posture of reverence, acknowledging God's holiness.

Now, what type of laughter is this?

He see it says he he said to himself, he's not saying this to God, okay?

He falls on his face before the Lord after hearing this, and then he says to himself, like he's crouched over before God, shall I at a hundred years old have a child?

Shall Sarah at ninety have a child?

He's laughing to himself of this.

This is wonder and astonishment, this is surprise at the gratuitous kindness of the Lord that he is seeing so clearly in tangible expression in his own life.

Have you ever heard of something so strange and unthinkable?

Do you know how many decades ago we gave up on the hope of a child?

And yet here we are encountered with it once again, me at a hundred, Sarah at ninety.

What what is the surprise of the Lord?

Now, oh, that's my ball.

The uh here, I don't know who's whose was this.

Boom.

Look at that.

We give out, oh, it came back.

Sorry, guys, that one's on you.

That was right to you.

If it hits your hands, then it's on you.

You gotta have soft hands at this church.

See, God's surprising.

Surprising nature of God is shown because God is two things.

He is both personal and absolute.

So we're used to thinking of God like He's just absolute.

In fact, many religions have at the and philosophies have at their concept an absolute end, something to which all things are headed or arcing.

Consider it the there's an ancient concept of fate, or a uh uh an eastern concept of Brahma, which serves that same sort of function.

Plato had the concept of the good, which all things are arcing towards.

Or less popularly, Parmenides had the concept of being, which all things are arcing towards.

Heraclitus summed up all things in flux, which encompasses all things.

See, these are absolute principles, so that we have something solid that we can understand and then build our lives on.

Plenty of other religions likewise have personal gods.

You know, Zeus is a personal god.

All of the polytheistic religions have these examples of personal gods, but those personal gods are not absolute.

God is both absolute and personal.

So in that we see he in his own nature is the highest good towards which all things are headed.

He is the source and the fountain of all goodness in the world.

That is his nature, his character, his depths is kindness.

The very heart of God is kindness, and he is personal, which means that this God who is the good that all things move towards, who is the source that all things flow from, flow from, we also call Lord, and we also call him friend.

That he is both the absolute and he knows us in these intimate ways in our very own stories.

He is the highest good, and he is manifest to us in his personhood, in the very Trinitarian nature of God, that he is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

He is personally relational in himself, and he is completely of himself.

It is what theologians call his asseity.

He is asse, which is what Foghorn Leghorn calls assay, assay, assay.

Which means he is of himself, and yet he is personal.

Do you see how this is the only faith in the world where these two impossible concepts are held completely together?

And in that we discover the surprising nature of God.

This type of goodness, the one who is steadfast and complete also accomplishes these surprises in our own lives in normal time.

It is a surprising goodness, a thrill of hope.

Genesis 17, 18, Abraham begins to recognize this surprise, and he he he offers this prayer, and it's almost like a pivot to something more reasonable.

He says, and Abraham said to God, Oh that Ishmael might live before you.

See, Ishmael is the son who's already born.

And he he's saying, Lord, just just give the covenant to Ishmael.

You know, me at a hundred, Sarah at 90, there's something just too wonderful about this, which is another possible translation.

This is just too wonderful.

How could it be something like this?

Lord, look at look at this plan that Sarah and I came up with.

See, it's a normal, reasonable plan, like we had another kid this way, a little shady means, but we can we can look over that and look, it's just right here.

Let's just move through this obvious plan.

But our God is absolute and personal.

He is surprising to encounter.

Our God is deeply surprising.

Many of us uh have the same desire to instead of encountering God's surprise, to war against him so that we might uh just have him come and affirm our own plans.

But so much of our lives are just surprise after surprise, ending up in situations that you never would have picked for yourself.

And saying, God, you are good.

Why would you put me here?

God, if you are absolutely good, come on, then why would you put me in in a situation of such loss, such defeat, such pain?

And then we need to see that he is personal.

He is not relating to us like fate.

He is relating to you particularly in love and care towards you, in your story, the depths of your need, the corrections in your heart that will lead to a flourishing to be made possible.

And so when Abraham offers this more obvious pathway, God says, No.

Intentionally.

You can trust that it will be tailored to you and absolutely good.

Genesis 17, 9, 19, God says this in response to the Ishmael request.

God said, No, but Sarah, your wife, shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac.

I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.

The name is Isaac of the new son, the son of the promise.

Isaac means laughter.

Ishmael means to hear.

These are all sort of prayers, these names.

But the name Isaac means laughter.

It is a prayer.

God, smile on me.

God is saying, No, I'm gonna stick with this surprise.

I've got something better for you that you couldn't have seen, and when I show it to you, it will fill you with a joyful, shocked, and wonderful laughter.

Have you ever considered God in that type of way?

That He is God, the depths of existence, the one from whom all of reality comes from.

If you were to look at the depths of his heart, you would see someone who desires to surprise you with wonderful things.

So that you in your heart would respond with a joyful and wonderful laughter.

This laughter takes on all of these tones throughout the story of Isaac.

Here we see Abraham's laughter, which is this laughter of joy and wonder.

And Sarah soon will see she laughs at the concept out of cynicism, but God continues to provide this child of promise so that from the outside looking in, you're able to see, oh, Isaac, son of laughter, this glorious gift to this family.

God is surely smiling on them.

That's another connotation of the name Isaac.

God is smiling on them.

But from the inside, when you know the story, that laughter that Isaac represents, it comes through both joyful wonder that takes place in our hearts when we see God and the cynicism that takes place in our hearts when we receive something wonderful from God in which we desire to cut it off.

But God is both absolute, meaning his promise will come, and personal, meaning he somehow works through the twisted natures of our own hearts to bring about his goodness.

I've heard it said, God can draw straight with crooked lines.

He's absolute and personal.

And we see that just in this name, laughter.

God's response begins to veer more directly about Ishmael.

And in this response, we begin to see the mystery of God.

So in his blessing to Sarah, we see this kindness of God.

In the laughter of Abraham, we see the surprise of God's kindness.

And here, in his response about this request for Ishmael, we see this mystery of God.

How is it that a personal being like us, trapped in time, finite, with a birth date and a death date?

How is it that we could relate in a meaningful way to the eternal God?

What does that look like?

Genesis 17.20, God says, As for Ishmael, I have heard you.

Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly.

He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation.

So I got that going for me, which is nice.

Genesis 17.20.

Yeah, so this is God's response to the prayer of Abraham.

Remember, Abraham prayed, Lord, consider Ishmael.

He says, I've heard you.

Now to get the strange transcendence that's being shown to us in this passage, you just need to look at the tenses.

As for Ishmael, God says, I have heard you.

That's about the present.

Abraham just prayed this prayer.

Abraham, I've heard you.

The good that Plato says all things are arcing towards, doesn't hear you.

That's what makes it absolute and unchanging.

Fate, the universe, that's what we like to say now in our modern vernacular.

You know, like if we were ancient peoples, we would say fate, but now we say the universe because we've transcended those ancient peoples.

That's what makes it constant and absolute.

God is absolute.

And he says to Abraham, as for your prayer about Ishmael, I've heard you.

When you're praying, have you ever thought, what if God hears me?

That takes place in the present.

And then God says, Behold, I have blessed him.

He hears him in the present, then he says, Behold, Ishmael, I have blessed him.

And we know when that took place.

It took place, the blessing of Ishmael took place 13 years before this, before this conversation between God and Abraham.

Thirteen years previously.

He looked at Ishmael and he told Hagar, I will bless him, I will multiply him, I will make nations come from him.

The same shape of blessing that's relayed here to Abraham.

It's already taken place.

And then the results of the blessing are something that no one has seen at this point.

God says they will happen.

He will be fruitful.

He will be multiplied.

These twelve princes will come from him.

In the present, God hears the prayer.

In the past, God had already set it into motion.

In the future, it will be realized.

So what do our prayers do?

Did it matter that Abraham prayed?

Because, you know, God says that he heard him, but if he didn't pray, like it already happened, right?

He already blessed Ishmael.

That already took place.

And if he didn't pray now, would God have cut it off and said, Well, that blessing back then, this future realization of it, it won't happen because you didn't pray about it.

Do you see the type of interaction that we're having there?

The interaction that's taking place there, which I know is wrestling through has wrestled through so many of your minds, what you're engaging with is is God absolute so that he doesn't hear me?

And what takes place in my personal life has no real effect on him, and I'm unheard, and there's no effectiveness of my prayers towards him?

Or is he personal to where I gotta pray right now if I wanna see this thing accomplished, or this isn't being accomplished because I didn't pray?

Is God some sort of absolute vending machine where I learn the code and I insert obedience and then I receive blessing?

Or is he just personal where I learned the dynamic where I can sort of manipulate him towards my behalf?

You see that what we're wrestling with in that question is how does a tiny little speck of a being like us engage with someone that's absolute and transcendent?

The only answer to this is the God that reveals himself to us in the Bible, who is both personal and absolute.

His purposes will be accomplished.

And he hears your prayers and moves through them.

If you can fit all of that in your mind, then you're a better theologian than me.

I don't think you're supposed to fit it all into your mind.

You know what I think a better response is?

Laughter.

Could this absolute God hear my prayers?

This is too wonderful for me.

Could his purposes remain constant even with all the ways that I try and interrupt them?

How could it possibly be that good?

That is the goodness of the Lord as he's revealed to us in scripture.

This is not a God who is a riddle to solve.

This is a God who in his own revelation to us crushes whatever categories we have to understand him.

And he shows himself to us saying, You will not know me on your terms.

Your terms are just not enough to know me.

You're gonna have to know me on my terms.

They're bigger than yours and different and better.

You're not gonna know me like another thing out in the world.

You're getting to know God.

Now that promise to Isaac, it remains the source of the covenant, of this promise to bless all peoples.

In Genesis 17, 21, God shows us his steadfastness, the absoluteness of his character.

He says, But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.

Now through that covenant with Isaac, that God certainly establishes, comes a line that moves throughout all of Scripture, a genetic line.

And from that line comes this one king who doesn't look like a king.

In fact, on this Sunday, we remember that when he rode into town like a conquering hero, he rode in on a donkey, not a war horse.

And when that king was lifted up to be exalted, he was lifted up on a cross to be killed.

But when that king died, we began to live forever.

That king, Jesus, is the absolute and the personal.

That is our God.

And in that God's death, we find life.

This is the good news.

This is the heart of our faith.

It is not intuitive, it's better than you think.

Now imagine you look back on these passages and you look at these wonderful promises, and you look at this glorious picture of Jesus, and you look at the kingdom that He's established, and you consider your own sin in the presence of the Lord, and you think, what could it mean if I could be made right before the Lord and confidently receive his goodness towards me with laughter?

What you're asking to do is live a life of faith.

A life that says, I will take as the fundamental aspect of reality that we live in a world such that God became a man and lived among us, and he died on our behalf, and three days later he rose again, having defeated death.

And so, what other enemies do we have?

What other stories can you tell once death is dead?

This is the shape of the world that we live in.

Can you put your glasses on and look back out over the people that you're sitting next to and recognize that you're sitting next to people who who, by their faith in Christ, you might share eternity with?

That one day this pack of strays will shine like the sun because of what Christ has accomplished.

Put on the glasses of Scripture, see the story that you're actually in.

Be filled with wonder and surprise and laughter.

That is the promised one.

Son of laughter.

What a counterculture that would be.

Do you remember?

I was talking to someone earlier this week.

Remember boredom?

We don't have that anymore.

Were we talking about that?

Yeah.

Ryan and I were joking about that.

Yeah, remember boredom?

That's just we just got rid of it.

Oh no, I forget where I was going with that.

I feel so alone.

Okay, well, my my my mind blanked.

So let's bring this to a close.

Remember boredom.

Oh, what a shame of waiting that sermon.

Come to this life of faith.

Remember the wonder that you could look out and see the world with.

Oh, what I was gonna say is we got rid of boredom, we all became cynics.

That was it.

What a counterculture of people who expect to be surprised in joy by the God who is behind it all.

Who are able to rejoice even after a week like this one, where we saw the most horrible things take place in Boulder.

And yet there could still be a laughter of surprise.

We'd have to look to God, put on new new type of glasses to see this world.

All right, let's see if there are any questions.

No questions today.

Okay.

Well, let's take communion.

Now, communion this morning uh will be right up front.

I'll go ahead and take these.

And ta-da.

So as you can see, we've got our uh prepackaged communion as well as bread, which you can uh dip into the wine and some gluten-free wafers as well.

Uh so we'll just move out of your rows in an orderly fashion, uh, and we'll come to the front.

After you take communion, if you have kids in the uh redemption kids, then go ahead and get them and bring them back in so we can all sing together as families.

In 1 Corinthians 11, 23 through 26, it says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in rem 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.

Holy Father, we pray that you would bless this time.

Lord, that as we partake of communion, that we would come to the same table together and know that our only hope is to come to you, the only personal absolute, the only one who can bridge between, who can put your hand on God's shoulder and on our shoulder, Lord.

That way we might be atoned for in his presence, made new in our humanity, so that we can relate to God as the creatures he created us to be.

Lord, we pray that we would take this in faith, in remembrance of you, looking forward to the great feast that we will all share together.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.