02: Heart - From Assent to Conversion

John chapter 3, verses 1 through 18.

John 3:1–18

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

Jesus answered him, Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old?

Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

Jesus answered, Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.

Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born again.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

Nicodemus said to him, How can these things be?

Jesus answered him, Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

Truly, truly I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.

If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

This is the word of God.

The Lord be seated.

Let's give a hand to Elise.

That was a lot to read.

While we were standing up there, Zach said, earlier in the week, you told me that she would just be reading the first eight verses.

You're a real hypocrite.

And I said, I already confessed that.

And you said I was forgiven.

So now who's the hypocrite?

Yeah, that's what we do is we play gotcha games.

Um so welcome to Redemption Church Denver.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rasman.

I'm the pastor here.

Uh we are in the midst of a series called Redemption Applied, which I'll get to in a bit, but a couple of announcements.

One, we are doing a baptism today.

So after uh we're done in here, we'll make our way down the stairs to the front porch and do a baptism and celebrate, and it'll be great.

Um so right after the service, yeah, that's right.

People are for baptism, which is good.

You're in the right place.

Uh uh right after the service, go get your kids quick, because you're gonna want them to see this.

Uh and uh we'll do the baptism then.

So uh also uh there's a uh baby dedication coming up.

So Redemption Church Denver is uh slowly repopulating the earth.

Um uh so uh as a part of that, we're dedicating our babies.

So if you have a baby that you would like to dedicate, uh go to the Redemption Church Denver app, tap on the calendar, that will tell you when the baby dedication is, and you can sign up your baby there.

Um let's pray, we'll get into our text.

Father, thank you for bringing us together today as a body to worship you.

Lord, there is so much in these verses uh that's so familiar.

I pray that you would make it new in our hearts.

Lord, would you open our hearts to see your glory, the glory of the love that you have for us in Christ?

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So, uh, this is the second week in our series, Redemption Applied.

The purpose of this series is we're taking the fall to lay out basically our sort of top 10, what we're aiming for as Redemption Church.

This is to lay out our vision for our church.

So uh a bit on where we are, why you're in a building that says the heights, and why you're meeting at 4:30.

So we are a church that is in transition in some ways, but also not in other ways.

Um we are actively looking for a new location uh and a likely move to a morning service, things of that nature.

Uh and in kind of this intermediate period, we're able to be meeting at partnering with this great church, the Heights, who meets here on Sunday mornings, and we use the space in the evenings.

Um, it was really cool coming in today.

They were just wrapping up, and I was coming in, and the pastor of the Heights and I just got to pray for each other.

He was leaving, and he was like, Oh, I preached a sermon, and I was like, I don't know how I felt about it.

And I was like, Yeah, isn't that the worst thing in the world?

Don't you just want to crawl under your covers and hide forever?

He was like, Yeah.

And so we prayed.

Um, and then everything was fine.

So you should pray.

Uh and in kind of the midst of, but we're not talking about their church, we're talking about our church.

So uh what we're seeking to identify is a place in the city that we can have a long-term impact.

Because we believe that Jesus' redemption is not theoretical, it's an actual redemption that takes place in real space and time.

Right now, that's really happening in our church, that really happens amongst us, that really happens amongst us as a people.

But we want you to know and to really hear this.

You're kind of a part of a church plant.

So if this church is gonna make it, if we're gonna keep rolling and we're gonna see that type of long-term impact happen, it's because we will come together and make that sort of thing happen.

So, congratulations.

You just joined the church plant.

Welcome.

You can introduce yourself to each other when we're done at the baptism.

This series is supposed to lay out that type of vision.

And we're beginning uh, and the way that it's broken down is into three sections, which are heart, community, and world, or heart, community, and Denver for our purposes.

So we'll see.

Last week we looked at how the gospel of Jesus Christ is the power and the purpose of everything that we do as a church.

The good news that Jesus died for our sins, was raised, that he is the reigning king of the universe.

That good news is the power behind everything that we seek to do as a church.

And it's also the purpose behind everything we seek to do as a church.

So we seek to be empowered by his kingdom as well as we pray that his kingdom will come.

It is our end goal.

So the way that that flows out practically is we'll see the redemption as Jesus' kingdom moves forward.

We see the redemption of our hearts personally.

So you can think of your own heart, yourself, you, me, pronouns.

And then it creates a community amongst us of people with these redeemed hearts.

And then that community becomes a blessing to the whole world, so that Denver benefits and that God's kingdom spreads well beyond the borders of our building and well beyond the border borders of just us as a people, but that the whole city becomes seasoned by the good news of Jesus Christ.

So this is our first week in our section on the heart.

And what we're what we're focusing in on this week is this transition that we want to make in our hearts where we move from ascent to conversion.

And so here is a primary focus for Redemption Church Denver.

We want to see people converted.

Yeah, it's an old school word, it's an old school goal.

But we want to see people move from just ascent, so just ticking off boxes of yes, I may agree about these things that Jesus said.

And we want to we want to move from that to radical transformations in our heart, such that we would use the word, they were converted.

So let's start off by looking at what does ascent mean?

And then how do we move from just ascent to real whole life conversion, where our hearts are transformed by Jesus.

One of the terms that's used in scripture for this is the term born again.

And that's also used sort of colloquially just in pop culture.

Born again is a demographic of person.

Uh, but we are uh looking to sort of reclaim, dust off this old term uh to see what did this mean in its original context, and what does that mean for us today that we might be born again?

So let's start off where the conversation that the term comes up starts off.

Uh, this is John 3, verses 1 through 2.

John 3:1–2

It says, Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher.

Come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

Okay, so we've set the scene.

There's a man, his name is Nicodemus, and he's a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, and he visits Jesus by night, and he comes to him not with a question, but he sort of floats the statement to Jesus.

So the first thing to see is that this is very different from the way that we typically use the term born again, because Nicodemus is the one who's going to be called to be born again.

When we typically use that word, it fits this sort of narrative.

Somebody lost everything in their life, and they found themselves with nowhere to turn to but Jesus.

And when they turned to Jesus, he was there for them.

And that person then became a born-again Christian.

I think that's the typical understanding of the term born-again in our culture.

If you say, I'm a born-again Christian, you'd say, Oh, like what happened?

What were you going through that caused you to be a born-again Christian?

But that's the and that's a true story, and it's a good story.

We want stories like that.

It's just not Nicodemus' story.

Nicodemus was not at the bottom rung of society, he's at the top rung of society.

Nicodemus is uh not uh uh struggling with some sort of you know apparent sin or addiction or anything like that.

It's just not the place that Nicodemus is at in his life.

He is a Pharisee, which means he's uh a teacher of the law.

Uh he's a ruler of the Jews, so he is one of the religious elite.

He's in charge.

And he has a lot personally at stake in the established order of the world.

For things to become disrupted would be very bad for him.

That's why he visits Jesus, this incredible disruptor to the established order at night.

Because you see, he's interested, but he can't visit during the day asking these questions publicly.

It'd be too risky for what he has at stake.

So instead, we see this elite religious person visit Jesus at night.

And here's how he addresses him.

He says, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God.

No one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

So he addresses Jesus as a fellow theologian.

Right now, it's just two theologians talking, two teachers of the law, both know the Old Testament front and back, both are able to debate and understand each other.

And so he tells Jesus, he kind of floats this thesis of who Jesus likely is.

He says, Look, I've seen the signs that you've done, and I know that no one can do these signs unless they're a teacher sent from God.

So, Jesus, I know who you are.

I have the category established that you fit into.

You're just like a Moses, or you're just like an Elijah or an Elisha.

You're performing these incredible miracles, and you're another prophet sent from God that's going to describe to us how it is that we attain to the kingdom of heaven.

To at this point in the conversation, Jesus is somebody that anyone could agree with.

A Pharisee can walk up to Jesus and say, You're a teacher sent from God.

And your religious studies professor at CU Boulder can walk up to Jesus and say, probably like a teacher sent from God type of person.

Among the world's religious leaders.

You see, we have the category established.

So he so Nicodemus comes to Jesus and he floats this kind of thesis, like, look, here's the category that you fit in, and and you can tell how smart I am, because I crack the code.

You know, I piece these signs together, and I know that you're like one of these Moses type of teachers.

You're one of the world's religious leaders.

It's high praise.

So here is Jesus' response.

In John 3 3, Jesus answered him.

Notice that there was no question.

But Jesus answered him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

That's uh kind of a non-starter in the debate world.

You know, uh, hey, I think I figured out who you are.

I think you're like one of these Moses type of figures.

You know, you can't see any of the kingdom of heaven unless you're born again.

What Jesus is saying is this premise that you're starting from, where you're trying to take take the information that you're gathering from your life and then reason up to who I am, you just can't get to me from there.

This category that you already have in your life that's going to allow you to uncover what type of person I am, you don't have the category.

You can't get there from here.

You must be born again.

He begins by talking about the kingdom.

This is something that would have been of central importance to both of them, to any Jewish theologian, talk of the kingdom of God.

That's what we're trying to discover.

What is the kingdom of God?

How do I get into it?

How do I know that I'm in it?

And what does Jesus say?

All the teaching that you've done, all the information you've gathered, all that you've spent your life studying of what the kingdom of God is and how you're gonna be able to see it, none of that work will get you there.

All of that is built on a shoddy foundation.

The starting premise is false.

And so, as you can imagine, Nicodemus is frustrated by this.

Uh, and so here's Nicodemus' response in John 3, 4.

He says to him, How can a man be born when he is old?

Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

Now, here's what we typically do, and you might have done this already in your head.

Nicodemus?

He's talking about a spiritual birth.

You're you're really a you blowhard.

That's what we would say to Nicodemus.

These are Jesus, obviously, world-class theologian, God, you know, takes one to no one.

Nicodemus, incredible theologian of his day.

Okay, he he's not making a category mistake like that.

What he's doing is he's rhetorically pushing against Jesus.

This is, you know, if you're a debater, this is a reductio ad absurdum.

Also, if you're Latin.

Anybody here first language Latin?

No.

Uh if it's if there's a Latin name for it, it must exist.

That's what we learned in school.

Uh so uh what that means is you take the, you take your interlocutor's argument and you push it to just the absolute extreme until it becomes something completely absurd.

And that's what he does.

He's saying, okay, look, I'm gonna be born again.

I can't be born again.

I've got, I've only had this one life.

I can only know God, I can only know the kingdom as me with the experiences that I've had.

I was born of one mother, I was raised by one set of parents, that they gave me just these experiences.

My whole hope, my whole life has been dedicated to knowing and understanding what the kingdom of heaven is, who God is, how I get there, how I know I'm in it or not.

And this is the only life that I have to be able to do that.

So I'm just supposed to start again that was all for nothing.

Is this really what you're saying, Jesus?

Do you see what a sympathetic position he's in?

See what he's doing with his words here?

Our hope is to know God.

And Jesus is saying, you can't from where you're starting.

And so Nicodemus rightfully says, then what hope is there?

I can't be born again.

So if all this is for nothing, then what do we do?

I took several classes on Gandhi at Fue Boulder because I think they're mandatory.

Because you know, it's Boulder.

Um and uh one of uh supposedly, supposedly, so you learn a lot about what Gandhi thought of religion.

And he supposedly says this.

If we can pull up the quote, check this out.

Uh I wanted to touch it like Van O'White.

Um he says, the various religions are like different roads converging on the same point.

What difference does it make if we follow different routes, provided we arrive at the same destination?

You know, you might have seen the bumper sticker with Gandhi's picture.

All roads lead to the same mountaintop.

This is the way that we approach religions in our contemporary culture.

This is the way that we can stand back from all religions and say, yeah, they're all good, all basically the same, all teach basically the same morality.

So just go down that road and get to God.

Now, Nicodemus and Gandhi, they're different.

There's an insight.

Nicodemus and Gandhi are different.

And the difference is that Nicodemus is saying, There's one road, and I know the road, and it's in these scriptures, and I can figure it out from right here, and I'll be able to figure out for myself what each next step on that road is.

And Gandhi's saying, look, everybody's doing that same thing, and you'll figure it out for yourself.

But they're both saying, right where you're standing is a good enough starting place.

Right who you are, that can know God.

If you just get this next piece of information, if you just get this next insight, if you just understand peace in this next new way, if you just incorporate this next practice into your life, then you'll get one more step down this road.

You see, they're both building their own roads to God.

The fundamental assumption, though one seems more broad and one seems more narrow, they're operating off the same assumption, which is that the purpose of religions is to show us how to get to God.

Now arrives Jesus.

None of that will work.

You have to be born again.

This start that you've had in your person, you simply cannot get there from here.

So Jesus continues talking to Nicodemus.

And in a very Jesus way, the way that he explains his prior claim of you must be born again is just by doubling down on it.

It's like, be born again?

That's absurd.

Absurd?

Okay, let's try this.

Jesus answered, truly, truly I say to you, this is John 3, 5 through 8, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.

So Jesus is saying that in order to enter the kingdom of God, not even enter, he just says in order to see the kingdom of God, you have to be born of the water and the spirit.

What he's saying is you have to be both cleansed and reanimated.

So cleansed, you have to be born of the water.

The symbol that we have of this is baptism.

Congratulations, you're at the right Sunday.

You're gonna get to see one of these in person, see exactly what it's like.

And the reason it's baptism, the reason it's water, is because water is this demonstration of recreation throughout the whole of scriptures.

Noah in the flood, you know, water is separated from land on the third day, then we want to cleanse the earth.

How about we just undo that third day?

Now the water covers all of the land.

And everything that was made on the sixth day is destroyed.

The world is cleansed by water.

Happen to find yourself, I don't know why I'm doing this like an infomercial.

Happen to find yourself trapped in an ancient Egyptian slavery.

What's the way out?

Through the water.

Through the Red Sea.

It's parted.

They're set free by moving through the water.

When they establish the temple, they carry around the sea with them, which is this big bronze basin.

And it's a constant reminder that God cleansed us through the water.

He rescued us through the water.

In the temple vision that Ezekiel has, a small trickle of water leaves the throne room and it moves out and becomes this great, mighty, rushing river.

And that's that same scene is picked up on at the end of Revelation as there's this great river that runs through the city, that nourishes the trees of all the nations of the world.

See, this picture of water that cleanses and nourishes, moves through the whole of the scriptures.

And so Jesus is capturing this image, and he's applying it to our baptisms, which is his baptism, that we become united into as we become cleansed by him.

Because here's the thing with biblical imagery.

You know where the images came from?

Let me say this.

I want to frame this a little harsher.

This is what we always do as Protestants.

Like with baptism, we'll say this like 15 times.

It's just a symbol.

Don't get too crazy, all right, thinking there's anything real happening here.

It's just a symbol, so everybody relax.

All right, back up.

Fake person I'm arguing with.

I've studied an argument all week, so I'm feeling a little feisty.

The who made the water that they wanted to use as a symbol?

Whose ideal was water?

All right, all together now.

Great.

So when he chooses something as a symbol to demonstrate this thing about himself, that's because he built into the thing.

Himself.

This characteristic of himself.

That's why when Jesus comes and he sits next to the woman at the well and she's drawing water and he's like, hey, can you get me some water?

And she's like, Who are you?

He's like, if you knew who I was, you'd ask me for living water.

Why?

I'm the water.

Whenever you've tasted water and been nourished, that's me.

That thing, that most fundamental water-ness of water.

That's just me showing myself.

So is it just a symbol?

Yeah.

But look, it's a really good one.

Next, the spirit.

When Jesus uses the term spirit, we immediately do this thing in our mind where we go, okay, so there's flesh, which is physical, that's bad, and there's spirit, which is spiritual, that's good.

And we start making this dichotomy that's basically like comparing uh gases and solids.

And we say, solids are bad, gases are good.

We want to become more like gases.

That's a bad thing.

Don't think like that.

So what Jesus means when he says spiritual, this is not a denigration of the physical.

He resurrects himself in a real physical body, right?

So that would be absurd for him to denigrate the physical.

What he's saying is, what are you animated by?

What are you motivated by?

What is capturing your heart and your imagination?

What brings life to your life?

Is it the flesh?

Do you think it's the satisfaction of these own desires that you've cultivated, or is it the spirit?

He's not saying, what are you made of?

He's saying, what are you powered by?

It's not asking, is the boat wood or metal?

He's asking, is the sailboat or a motorboat?

What are you powered by?

That's the spiritual flesh distinction.

And so he says you have to be born of the Spirit, reanimated by God, cleansed and reanimated.

That's what we see Jesus calling them to.

So Nicodemus, cornered at this point, says, How can these things be?

If I can't get there from this life that I've had, I need to be cleansed by the water.

I need to be reanimated by the Spirit.

How can I do that?

Jesus says this in John 13, in John 3.13, he says, No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

The whole quest of Nicodemus' life, the whole quest of all the religions, all the practices in the world are to ascend to heaven.

That's the picture.

Climb this ladder, do these deeds, repent in this way, ascend to heaven.

I'll show you the way.

I'll show you the way to ascend to heaven.

This is the incredible reversal of Christianity.

That this is not a story of someone who shows us the way to ascend to heaven.

This is the story of the one who descended.

There's only been one who ascended, and you know who that is?

The same as the one who descended.

He descended from heaven to us.

All other religions say you climb.

Christianity says God came down.

All other religions say, this is the way.

Jesus says, I'm the way.

Here's the truth.

It's been told to me.

Jesus says, I'm the truth.

This is what real life will look like.

Jesus says, I'm life.

That thing that you're experiencing when you experience life, that's me.

I built that into creation so that you could better know me.

That's life.

And how do we receive that?

Well, Jesus says it's by receiving this testimony.

Receiving the testimony of the ones who have been there.

And who is the one who's been there?

Jesus.

How else could we know?

We would have no other opportunity to know unless we heard the very testimony of who God is from God Himself.

God had to descend for us to know.

Receiving that testimony sets off such a depth charge in our souls that we could be called born again.

That without climbing back into your mother's womb, your life has restarted.

Jesus gives us a picture of what that reception looks like.

In John 3, 14 and 15, he says this.

He says, And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

So that story, that little excerpt from a story would make sense to Nicodemus.

So let's fill in the blanks.

So the story that he's talking about is in Exodus, after the Israelites walk through the Red Sea, like in King of Egypt, Prince of Egypt, King is the sequel.

Just kidding, they didn't make a sequel.

And they uh walk through the Red Sea, and when they get across, they're like, you know, in Egypt we had pots of meat, and it was great.

And God's like, no, you didn't.

I'm gonna send a plague of snakes.

So God sends a plague of snakes, and they start biting everyone, and everyone's getting sick and dying.

And then God says, okay, I'm gonna be merciful on you.

Here's how I'm going to rescue you from this plague of snakes.

Moses.

Take a snake, kill it, put it on a stick, hold it up in the air.

Anyone who looks at that dead snake will be healed.

So Jesus says, that story, that's about me.

And who does Jesus make himself in the story?

The best snake catcher of them all.

And he captures it and he holds up the highest staff in the no, Jesus makes himself the snake, the dead snake that's nailed to the rod, the thing you look at, the thing that all Moses did was hold up and point to and say, if you look at that, you'll be healed.

Jesus is that.

How do you receive Jesus when you're dead and you're sick and you're dying?

Because that's what it means to have been born once.

You need someone to look at.

You need a testimony of life itself that you might be saved.

How do you receive it?

You look at Jesus.

You look at him and you're healed.

Now, if you look to Jesus, this can be described in terms that lead us to this dichotomy that we're making this morning, which is we need to move from assent to conversion.

And there's a way to look at Jesus that is like just we assent to the fact of who Jesus was.

So if we list out Jesus' characteristics and say, you know, do you believe Jesus was the Son of God?

Yes, I do.

These are questions that I'm gonna ask today before the baptism.

Do you believe that Jesus was the Son of God?

Do you believe that he died for your sins?

Do you count on him and him alone for your salvation?

Yes, yes, yes.

Great, baptized.

You know, if we look at those as just facts that we can either affirm or deny, then we've completely missed it.

Because the implications of these facts are so complete.

They set off such a depth charge in our lives that they require a completely new person to hold them.

A completely new birth, a new creation, a new type of human to even live in a world like this.

Here are the implications of Jesus being the snake that we look at to be healed, of Jesus being the God who descended, that we might know him.

What does it mean that such a thing like that has happened?

Why would something like that happen?

John 3, 16 to 17.

Sorry, these are really good.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Christianity is not the story of us seeking God at night.

Like Nicodemus was.

That we might be made new.

The way that that repaints the world, the way that that repaints your life, is not a fact that you can simply assent to and incorporate into the way that you already are.

If you think Jesus is who he says he was, it must change everything.

I've used this example before, I'm going to end with it, of why we can't just assent to this fact, but it requires a total conversion of our hearts.

I like this story because it's true and because it describes conversion in completely non-spiritual terms, which I think is helpful.

So the greatest naked-eye astronomer who ever lived was a man named Ptolemy.

Ptolemy was Greek.

The reason he was a naked-eye astronomer is because the telescope hadn't been invented yet.

So Ptolemy's maps of the solar system and of the stars and of the way that things moved and the sun moved and the earth moved were so good that they went unquestioned for 1,300 years.

That's pretty good as far as maps of the solar system go.

I'm just kidding, like we have anything to compare that with.

Then the telescope gets invented.

And our measurements, we start making measurements of the way that we think the earth is or or the sun is revolvering around the earth, and it's just not working.

You know, okay, let's measure it over here in this season and in this way.

Okay, yeah, that works.

That was really accurate.

Let me compare it to yours.

This doesn't make any sense.

And it's just not working over and over and over again.

And so eventually someone comes along named Copernicus, and he says, you know, none of this is working.

He did it in just like a day.

You know, none of this is working.

No, it wasn't that quick.

I think, in order for me to affirm this data, I'm gonna have to convert my whole way of thinking about the universe.

And we're gonna have to completely flip this model so that no longer is it the sun revolving around the earth, but it's the earth revolving around the sun.

New data assented to requires a complete conversion of the way that they saw everything.

When we affirm Jesus as Lord, this is the Copernican revolution of the soul.

It wasn't all revolving around me.

It wasn't me trying to build a ladder to get to heaven.

It was all revolving around God.

He's the one who descended.

In order to see that, we have to be born again.

Be born again.

Look to Jesus.

If you haven't, get baptized today.

Not next week.

It will be a logistical disaster.

Be baptized today.

Cleansed by the water.

It's just a symbol.

Yeah.

From the one who invented water.

Be filled with his spirit.

So what will we focus on as a church as we move forward?

We will proclaim this gospel of Jesus Christ in our city, in our relationships, and we will seek that people's whole way of being is converted so that they might be born again and get off this terrible, torturous treadmill of trying to climb to God.

Look, we've been to the top of Mount Olympus.

There are no gods there.

It doesn't matter how hard you climb.

Jesus came to us.

Let's take communion, which is our only other sacrament, which you'll hear of later.

And this is a picture of when Jesus' baptism is complete.

It's completed on the cross.

We have the bread, which is the sign of his broken body, which is broken for our sins, his blood, which is poured out for our sins.

And we do this every week to remember him.

Just a symbol, right?

But he's the one who made bread.

Let's partake joyfully with hearts that are glad towards the Lord.

And we'll sing, then we'll go do a baptism.

Father, I'm sure that was long.

But I pray that you would work in our hearts this amazing, amazing picture of who you are.

What type of God would make themselves the dead snake on a stick?

To save rebels.

To believe such a thing must shift the way that we view the world completely.

God, would you change our hearts?

May we be born again.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.