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[0:00] Hey, Winter Harbor, how you doing? I am Jesse, for those of you who don't know me, and if you were thinking, wow, that shirt is a very bold statement, I'm just trying to channel my inner lumberjack, all right?

[0:13] Somebody said I look like Elmer Fudd, so I don't prefer to go that way, so let's just think lumberjack, all right? Cool. All right. Glad you're here with us, and we are kicking off a brand new series, just kind of fitting at the beginning of a brand new year.

[0:30] To do that, so if you're new, it's a great time to be here. The beginning of year, it's always a good time to reassess, think about what's going on in life, think about what's most important, and to recalibrate our lives to those things, right?

[0:42] And as a church, that's what we're going to do. We're going to remind ourselves what is most important, and inform those of you who are new as well, and these are the things that we cling to. These are the things that define us, what we're meant to be all about as Christians, and so what we're going to do over the next few weeks is we're going to look at our values, which is gospel, worship, community, and mission.

[1:03] Today, we're starting out with looking at what it means to be transformed by the gospel. Now, if you're new, the gospel is the heartbeat of One Harbor Church.

[1:14] Now, if you've been around for any period of time, you've probably heard the word gospel a lot, right? It's in our mission statement, all for the sake of the gospel. We reference the gospel all the time in our sermons, and, you know, the thing is, is as we get familiar with the word or a concept or a thought, whatever it may be, it can easily become really just a meaningless buzzword that we throw around.

[1:35] It's like the pat answer to everything. If you want to seem clever and really mature as a Christian, you know, the answer is always the gospel. I mean, everyone's like, ooh, wow, I'm really impressed with that. The other potential danger for us isn't that it just becomes a meaningless buzzword.

[1:50] We can just kind of move away from it and drift from it. You know, kind of the interesting theme that I was picking up as we were worshiping today and the call to worship is this tendency for all of us, even as Christians, to run from good stuff.

[2:03] And sometimes we just drift from the gospel or sometimes we just run from the gospel. It can be totally forgotten. We can assume that, oh, yeah, yeah, I got it. I got everything there is to know about it.

[2:14] Don't need to hear about it again. Let's just move on to some other stuff. Now, what we have to do is ask ourselves, what's at stake if that happens? What's at stake if the gospel becomes a meaningless buzzword or we just totally drift from it or run from it?

[2:31] Now, we probably know people in our lives. Maybe it's family. Maybe it's friends. Maybe it's acquaintances at work or school, whatever it may be. They stay away from church because of their experience with church or experience with Christians that act so differently to Jesus.

[2:49] Right? There's a tendency to really like Jesus but then not really like God's people. Right? And you might even be here today. You might be one of those people and figured out, you know, or figured, you know, let me just give it another shot.

[3:01] I'll step into church again. We want to say, man, thank you. That's super brave. And we thank you for being here. The church, us guys in the church, believers, we have to own up to the fact that we can sometimes be cantankerous, moody people.

[3:16] Right? We can also be quite hypocritical. And that is often what happens when the gospel becomes assumed and we move it to the periphery of our lives.

[3:27] When we don't see it as the central part of what we're supposed to be saturated in and rooted to and clinging to. We can make church about so many other things.

[3:38] We can make church about the numbers and church growth and programs and performance and other metrics and make it so entertaining trying to draw a crowd or build a brand of church.

[3:50] And, guys, when we do that, it becomes a slippery slope, a really dangerous slippery slope. So, you know, we can act like, you know what, the gospel, it's like this starter house, right? It's a starter house we kind of move into and it's cool for a season.

[4:04] But, you know what, at some point you outgrow it and you need to upgrade, you need to get into some other stuff and we move away from it. But it's not meant to be the starter house of Christianity. It's the home, it's the place where we remain and abide in for all of our lives.

[4:20] So, what is the gospel? Well, let's be honest. I'm going to be honest with you. It's going to be impossible to unpackage all that the gospel is in one sermon. There's just no way.

[4:31] So, today we're going to look at a passage that gives us some, like, some of the major headlines of the gospel. So, Ephesians 2 verses 11 to 19 is where we're going to be working from. If you have a Bible, you can turn there. We'll also have it on the screen.

[4:42] It says this. Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision, by what is called the circumcision, which is made in flesh by hands, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ.

[4:56] It says this.

[5:26] It says this.

[5:56] A minute when I said these are the major headlines, right? These are some amazing headlines of what the gospel is, right?

[6:08] And the major headlines are saying this to us. The gospel is the good news of what Jesus has done. It's important to realize that the gospel, it isn't good advice.

[6:22] The gospel is good news. It's not these ten principles that you can live by. It's not these ten life hacks to get the better life or the perfect life that you're wanting and hoping for.

[6:33] See, there's a big difference between advice and news. Advice, you can take or leave. But news is news. It's information. News is what has happened.

[6:44] Like my buddy Donnie says, advice is dependent on you doing something about it. But news has already happened to you. You know, it's the difference between you've won the lottery and you can be wealthy if you work harder.

[6:59] You feel the difference there, right? One is news and one is advice. I worked hard as a young man and experienced some success. And you know what that did?

[7:10] It led to a lot of pride. Suddenly, I knew everything. You couldn't tell me anything. I was super opinionated and I was really judgmental, especially when I perceived like, oh, you know what?

[7:21] I'm more successful than this person, so I'm better than them. But I also experienced a lot of failure at the same time. Everything wasn't going perfectly well, which also led to me feeling a lot of despair and a lot of shame.

[7:34] And I compared myself to people who are more successful with me, so I had to try harder. I had to be better than them. And it ended up with me just being burnt out. You know, there aren't different levels of Christianity to reach that are dependent on our performance or our own hard work.

[7:55] The gospel isn't this good advice about what we can do to work hard and to earn God's love to get into heaven. It's the good news of what Jesus already did for us. Romans 4, 6, and 8 says this, For while we were still weak, I don't like to be called that, do you?

[8:12] For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. And you might be thinking, well, Jess, who's the weak?

[8:22] Who's the ungodly? Surely that's not me. That's everybody. All right? That's me. That's you. That's us. For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. But God shows his love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us.

[8:37] We didn't make the first move toward God. God made the move toward us. The gospel doesn't tell us that we have to do whatever it takes to earn God's love.

[8:47] God's love isn't dependent on our performance. It tells us God did whatever it takes, God did whatever it took to rescue us. Why did he do that?

[8:59] Well, he did that because he loves us, right? When we read the Bible just looking for good advice on how to live, then you know what we get to do is we can stand back and say, like, oh, I took the good advice. I applied it to my life.

[9:09] I get to take credit for the results. I get to boast in myself. So when we do well, we become proud and arrogant and judgmental and condemning. And then when we fail and we don't live up to those standards, we feel guilt and shame and despair, right?

[9:24] And what Martin Luther calls it, it's like a drunk man riding a horse. We fall off to one side in pride just to get up and drop to the other side in despair. And we always move between these two realities of pride and despair if we treat the gospel as good advice.

[9:40] But when we treat it as good news, the good news of what God did for us, what it does, it makes us humble. We're not proud and we don't despair. We're a humble people that don't boast in ourselves.

[9:52] We boast in God and what he's done in him alone. But that's probably why we really prefer to treat it as good advice, right? We don't like to be humbled. We don't like to act humble.

[10:03] Because the gospel headlines, when we read it and we see it for what it truly is, good news, not good advice, it constantly is telling us that we're not the hero. Only Jesus is.

[10:14] And not only are we not the hero, the headlines make it out like we were really bad off. See, the gospel is the good news because there's also bad news. Ephesians 2, 11 to 12, it says, Therefore remember, remember at one time, remember at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, was made in the flesh by hands.

[10:38] Remember, you guys remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

[10:54] What is he getting at? What is he saying here? Man, before you can understand there's good news, you kind of have to understand the bad news. You can't appreciate the one without the other. So if all you did is watch the very end of the Lord of the Rings where everything is going so well and everyone's celebrating and things are awesome, you'd be like, Okay, all right, that's cool, yay for them.

[11:17] But actually, you only know and understand how good that good news is when you've watched the whole of the movie, when what's happened before is put in front of you and experienced what those guys had to go through and face, the darkness and the craziness and the evil and the suffering.

[11:36] And in the same way, we have to remember why the good news is the good news. Paul says to us, Remember, remember who you once were. Remember who you were before Jesus.

[11:48] And the gospel only makes sense when we remember who we were without Jesus. And it's humbling, right? We're not the hero. It's not a pretty picture. It says we're separated from God. We were outsiders. We were strangers to the covenant promises.

[12:01] We didn't know the story that God was doing, this redemptive story of what God was on about to save us through sacrifice. We were totally clueless to it. And then it says you didn't have hope and you didn't have God.

[12:15] We were without God. And so when I stop, when you stop, when I remember who I was at one time, when I was on my own, when it was just Jesse doing his thing, even when I was at the top of my game, man, does the gospel let me brag about those days?

[12:33] No, it doesn't. Man, it humbles me. It makes me see that even on my best day, man, I was hopeless. I didn't even know what I didn't know.

[12:43] And this doesn't lead me into pride. No matter what I did, no matter how much church I attended or money I gave or sermons I listened to, it didn't matter that my dad was a pastor.

[12:54] It didn't matter that I achieved some success by the world's standards. Without Jesus, I was without hope and I was without God. I was a stranger to God's love. I was an outsider to his promises in Jesus Christ.

[13:07] Why? Because of sin, because of my sin. It says sin separates us from God. Sin is why we're outsiders. Sin is why we're separated from those comorbidities.

[13:17] Sin is why we have no hope and we're without God in this world. And it's good for us to remember this. But that doesn't mean that we dwell on that, right?

[13:28] It's good to remember our past, but it's bad to get stuck there. It's good to remember who we once were. But Paul starts with the bad news to move us on to the good news, right?

[13:40] He says, man, remember who you once were, but then he redirects us. Ephesians 2.13. These four amazing words. But now in Christ Jesus. But now.

[13:51] He's like, hey, all the bad news now. Boop. Here we go. Here's some amazing stuff coming your way. But now in Christ Jesus. You who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

[14:06] Everything that used to define you and me has totally changed. The gospel is the good news that changes you. And the gospel doesn't change part of us, right?

[14:17] God doesn't come in like a nip and tuck surgery, right? And he's like, I'm going to adjust your chin, make your nose a little bit smaller, lift that ear up, you know? So it's a little more, what's the word?

[14:28] Or symmetrical. We don't like asymmetry in our face, right? That's what I got. No, but it totally changes who we are.

[14:39] It's not like a few things God comes in and changes about. He totally changes us. You are made a new person. And it's not like a little name change, right? It's not like, you know what, I don't like who I was.

[14:50] I'm just going to like bury that person who I was. I'm going to change my name from Jesse Kincer. I'm going to be someone else, you know? Buck Rogers or I don't know, something like that, right? Sounded like a good lumberjack name, I don't know.

[15:03] Man, it's not as simple as that. It's deeper than that. It's more significant than that. It's an adoption. It's God adopting us. We get to belong to a new family. It's a new citizenship.

[15:15] It's belonging to a new people. And here is this amazing picture to help us understand what it's like. Think about this picture. We go through life amassing these different labels, right, that get stuck on us.

[15:27] And they define who we are. Think of like a NASCAR suit. You know those NASCAR suits? They're plastered with all these sponsors all over them. And that's what we go through life. We're amassing all these things that get stuck on us, these identity labels.

[15:40] Some of these things are identities that we take pride in, right? I'm a college graduate. I'm a rich and successful person. I'm a Marine. And some are identities of shame.

[15:52] I'm in the Army. Let's get a little more serious.

[16:04] Let's get a little more serious. Some of these are identities of shame. Think about this, guys. Some of us, that identity is my parents didn't want me. I was abandoned. I was left.

[16:15] I was cheated on. I was abused. I'm an addict. And these are lies that get stuck on us that, man, they fill us with shame.

[16:34] We love to put our best foot forward so that people can read the big headlines of our lives like, hey, be impressed with me. And we try to do our best to cover up those other patches that are on us, that shame us.

[16:48] There's these three lies that we hold onto and cling to, these three lies of false identity, right? They say you are what you do, you are what you have, and you are what others say about you.

[17:01] Those are the three lies that whisper into us that we can hold onto and believe, and we start to pick up these labels of shame. And then there's ID labels that we're not even aware of, right, before God, like, interrupts our lives and reveals them to us, that we were without God and without hope.

[17:19] But this is who we were. This passage is saying this is who you were. But now, in Christ Jesus, all those identities, all those labels, they get ripped off.

[17:30] He comes and he rips them off. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Now we have this new identity, a new way of being and belonging to God.

[17:41] Ephesians 2, 18 to 19 says, For through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father. So then, we are no longer strangers and aliens.

[17:55] Labels ripped off. We're fellow citizens with the saints and the members of the household of God. Boom, boom, boom. God's putting these amazing labels and identities on us that don't give us shame.

[18:10] They don't make us feel guilty or embarrassed. Oh, they bring freedom. Because of what Jesus did, you and I, we're no longer outsiders. We're no longer strangers to God.

[18:22] We get to know God as Father, right? That means that we have this relationship with him that's established in love, not because of anything we've done, but because he loved us.

[18:32] He adopted us. He chose us. He brought us into his family through whatever it took to get us there, which was the blood of his own son. We are saved to be his children.

[18:43] We are adopted through Jesus' blood. And his blood removes all our sins. It removes those identities. And you and I were not strangers, but now we're members of God's household.

[18:54] We're not aliens and outsiders to God's kingdom. We're fellow citizens. We get all the benefits. We get all the privileges of being a son and a daughter of the king.

[19:04] We get all the benefits and privileges of being a citizen of God's kingdom. And all of this was accomplished for you and me by Jesus. We didn't lift a finger to help. We didn't put some money towards the campaign.

[19:16] We didn't pass a test. We didn't have the right stuff that God was looking for. And it was all grace. God saved us by grace. And he had to do this because sin separated us from God.

[19:31] We weren't pursuing God. God had to pursue us. He doesn't give us what we deserve. He gives us what we don't deserve. He brought us near. Now when we remember what we have versus what we deserve because of what Jesus did, man, it changes us.

[19:49] It changes us. It changes who we are. But not only that, it changes how we live. When we compare the bad news versus the good news, oh, my goodness, right? We live a new way.

[20:00] We live out of gratitude. We live out of thankfulness in response to God's grace and forgiveness over us. Now, remembering the good news is a good thing because it not only helps us love God more, it helps us love others more too.

[20:15] God isn't saving us into silos where it's just me and God all the time by ourselves. He's saving us into a family. He's saving us into a greater community that we get to be a part of.

[20:25] The gospel is the good news that affects more than just us. Verse 14, it says, for he himself is my peace. No, he himself is our peace who made us both one, right?

[20:43] We were separated. Now he's bringing us together one. He's broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. By abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two.

[21:02] So making peace. And might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. Remember, Paul's saying it started with, but now.

[21:16] But now in Christ. As us outsiders brought near by the blood of Jesus, we get all these amazing things. But a Christianity that reduces itself to there's God in me and no room for three.

[21:28] Man, that is not what Jesus died for, guys. Right? We are brought near to God and brought into a new community that God is making. He saves us out of something and he saves us into something.

[21:42] The gospel is about the peace God made between himself and me, himself and you. But there's even more than that. And the rest of the good news, of that good news, is just as important.

[21:54] He is bringing peace between people and bringing us together. So you kind of see this picture and we can get these like fanciful ideas. Like, man, based on this passage, church should look like this nice, cool kumbaya circle all the time, right?

[22:09] Just people loving each other, having fun together. The dividing wall of hostility, it's broken down. We don't treat people as outsiders anymore or less than and we don't judge them, right? But let's be honest.

[22:21] Let's be honest. When we think about the church, when we think about our own lives, if we're honest with ourselves, that isn't the picture that comes to mind, very often at least. Man, we still quarrel and fight, right?

[22:34] Right? James 4, 1 to 2 says that, you know why you do that, guys? You know why there's quarreling and fighting among you, church? It's because you're selfish.

[22:45] It's because you're greedy. It's because you want something and you don't get it. And you're impatient. And so the way you're going to get it is you're going to fight for it. And you're going to quarrel about it.

[22:56] It's because we think about ourselves and we place ourselves above everyone else. And so to fix that, we try to go about making peace the wrong way. We try to mimic how the world tries to resolve disputes.

[23:08] I mean, look at the news, right, in America. What do you see? Not a lot of peace there, right? Usually have a Democrat and a Republican in this, like, window, and all they're doing is yelling over each other.

[23:23] Not a lot of peace there. They're in their identified camps with their polarized ideologies. The assumption is, you know what?

[23:33] If I just give you my advice louder and longer than you do, I win, right? That's kind of the idea that's put forward to us.

[23:44] And therefore, if I win, you should come to my side. And why aren't you coming to my side, right? It's this idea of, like, you know, it's peace through conquering you. It may not be conquering you with a fist or a sword, but it's conquering you by forceful words.

[23:59] It's conquering you by forceful actions and attitudes. And that is just like what this passage is getting at. These two polarized groups, there was Gentiles and there was Israelites, and they were very different.

[24:12] It was like the Israelites were God's people, and they lived a certain way, and they did things very, very different to the Gentiles. And God didn't make peace by moving all the Gentiles to the Israelites, right?

[24:25] It didn't say that, does it? He was not moving all the right people to the left and all the left people to the right. And I'm not talking about politics here. The point of this passage is that he is taking two very different types of people, different culture, custom, values, beliefs, and he's making a whole new thing.

[24:44] That's what he's doing. He's not saying, I'm going to take your idea of utopia and your idea of utopia and what that looks like, and I'm going to try to split the baby here, right?

[24:57] Because when we try to do that, nobody ends up being happy. You know, there's an interesting Bible story that kind of picks up on this. This guy, Joshua, he's standing outside a city, and it's a city God's called.

[25:11] It's the first one they get into in the promised land, and they're supposed to fight against it. And so he's standing there looking at it, and suddenly God's angel appears before him with a sword drawn, and Joshua does this weird thing.

[25:23] He moves toward the guy, you know? Just advice. If there's a guy with a sword drawn, like, don't move toward him. It's not a good thing. But he goes and he asks him this question. I mean, Joshua's a gutsy dude.

[25:34] He says, like, hey, are you for us or are you for our enemies? And I love the angel's response. He says, no. No what?

[25:46] No, you're for us or no, you're for us. What's going on? But the point is he's telling Joshua, you know what? I'm not on your side and I'm not on your enemy's side. God is on God's side.

[25:58] That's what it's about. God isn't bringing people together by choosing one side over the other. He brings peace through conquering our sin and conquering us and bringing us to his side.

[26:10] That's how he brings about peace. The gospel tells us that everything that we thought made us better or significant or right is absolutely rubbish.

[26:21] The guy who wrote the words, the passage that we're looking at today, elsewhere in a book called Philippians, he wrote something about this, right? The apostle Paul. The apostle Paul, like in his day, he was like the American equivalent of crossing a Kennedy with a Jewish Billy Graham, right?

[26:37] He had all the connections. He had all the pedigree. He was born to the right family. He was religious. He was zealous. He knew all the scriptures. He practiced it with zeal.

[26:48] And what ended up happening? He persecuted God's people because he thought that was the right thing to do. And then God interrupts him. Then the gospel, he hears the good news and he knows the good news.

[27:01] And what does he say? Man, everything that I was, that whole list, that whole resume that I had, in comparison to knowing Christ, it's rubbish.

[27:12] Which literally, he's saying it's animal feces. That's about as valuable as it is. Peace comes when we believe the good news that nothing matters compared to knowing Jesus.

[27:23] When the church is saturated in the gospel, guys, when we're all saturated in the gospel, we stopped acting like a bunch of moody, judgmental curmudgeons. That's a good thing.

[27:36] Instead, we're a people who are people who forgive and give grace and mercy because we know what we received. We know how much God has forgiven us.

[27:49] We know we are a people who stand under his grace and live under his grace and live by his grace all the time. There's a famous parable that Jesus talks about where a guy comes, he's brought before a king or his master and he owes him a lot of money, like billions of dollars, something he'll never be able to pay back.

[28:13] And he falls on the mercy, on his mercy and he says, man, please, I can't pay you back and the master's moved by this and so he forgives him this debt. This debt he can never pay back.

[28:24] And that guy goes out and he finds someone that owes him $10,000. He shakes him down and the guy does the same thing. He's like, please forgive me the debt. And this man that had been forgiven these billions of dollars, man, he doesn't forgive the debt.

[28:41] Instead, he throws the guy in jail to pay off the debt. Now hearing this, the master pulls him back in and he says, what is this that you have done? What is this that you have done? Didn't I forgive you your debt?

[28:53] And now you couldn't go out and forgive another person their debt? And the point that Jesus was saying is that man, we don't forgive people once or twice. He says this thing, we forgive them 70 times, seven times.

[29:07] Or just to say, you never stop forgiving. You never stop being merciful. You never stop giving grace to people. You keep forgiving and you keep forgiving and you keep giving grace.

[29:21] Pride and shame will change us. It's gonna make us more bitter, more fearful, more angry, more anxious, and more fake. Grace and love, on the other hand, it changes us.

[29:34] What it does, it reproduces more grace and more love. It allows us to be more authentic. It allows us to present ourselves of who we really are. And when we get the gospel and we live in light of the gospel, we live these lives that are full of grace and love and mercy and forgiveness and this yields this harvest of peace that Paul's talking about, which is what the church is meant to look like.

[29:57] Jesus said that, you know what, one of our best apologetics isn't gonna be clever with our words, it's actually gonna be the way we love one another and the world's gonna look at that and see that and see God reflected in the way we love and care for one another and treat one another.

[30:14] And this can only happen, guys, when we start to share the gospel with each other more than giving each other good advice. The gospel is good news and it's good news everyone is meant to hear through us.

[30:28] Verse 17, and he, Jesus, came and he preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. If I could have the band come up. We're gonna wrap up in a couple of minutes here.

[30:43] News has to be proclaimed. The gospel isn't caught by osmosis. It's a message we're meant to share. Jesus came and he preached the good news.

[30:55] He preached the gospel. He put it on display. He walked among us and he didn't walk among us and was like, hey, you know what? I'm gonna do a mind ministry and hope you all pick up what I'm doing here, right? You can get the gospel through my actions.

[31:08] No, he spoke. He spoke and he preached the good news of the kingdom of heaven that has been brought near and his words and his actions lined up. Jesus, who had this perfect relationship with God, didn't wanna keep it private.

[31:23] He didn't come to earth and say, you know what? Me and God, I'm just gonna go to the top of the mountain and live my life there and it's gonna be me and God. It's gonna be awesome. No, he went into the world. He went into the darkness and he proclaimed the light and the goodness of the gospel to everybody.

[31:40] That is what the gospel does when it really infects us, when it really gets into our heart, when it really gets into our soul, we want to share it with everyone. And we have to realize this is how it has to happen.

[31:56] There's a quote from a famous guy. You might have heard it. People can't believe unless they hear. They can't hear unless someone preaches to them. It's the Apostle Paul from Romans. For the Christians in the room, the gospel is meant to be on the edge of our lips, ready to come out.

[32:12] The more saturated you and I are in it, the more we know it, the more we want to share it with everyone. Good news is hard to keep to yourself. The first time Haley was pregnant with our son Asher, man, that was good news we wanted to share with everyone.

[32:26] We couldn't keep it to ourselves. It would have been weird, right, if our family and our friends found out when we posted an Instagram picture in the hospital holding Asher, right? You guys would be like, man, we need to check a pulse, right?

[32:39] You guys are like, this is crazy because we can't help but talk about what we're excited about and what we're passionate about. If we don't keep the gospel the main thing, guys, we are only going to grow cold toward it.

[32:53] It isn't the good news we need to hear once. It's the good news we need to hear again and again and again. And the more in awe we are of the gospel, the more motivated we are to give it to others.

[33:04] C.H. Charles Spurgeon said this, I will not believe that you have tasted of the honey of the gospel if you can eat it all by yourself. If you're here, you're listening to this, you're not a Christian, maybe you're hearing this good news for the first time.

[33:19] Maybe you're thinking, how do I respond? Well, God tells us, it's this, you confess your sins to him. You confess that you're a sinner, you don't have to come and fake, be fake toward him.

[33:31] He knows it all anyways. You come and you say, Lord, I'm a sinner. But I believe that Jesus, you are a savior. And I want you to be my Lord and my savior. Save me from my sins. And you know what? That's it.

[33:43] If you're here and you're a Christian, remember the gospel that changed you. Remember that the gospel is changing you. Make your life about that. Don't assume it. Don't forget it.

[33:54] Don't let yourself grow cold to it. Share it. Make your life about that. Knowing and sharing the good news. We're gonna come and we're gonna take communion right now.

[34:05] And communion, I love it because what it does, it lands us in the gospel. It puts the gospel in 3D. Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, he took bread with his disciples and he broke it.

[34:18] He broke it in front of them. He said, this is my body. This is my body broken for you. He took the cup and he said, this is my blood.

[34:29] This cup is my blood. The blood of the new covenant. This new relationship that I am creating. This new relationship and this new person, this new community that I'm creating. This blood that forgives your sins.

[34:42] You could be a new man and a new community all in grace. We get to come and we get to take and be reminded of what Jesus did for us. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you.

[34:54] I thank you for the gospel. I thank you for what it is. I thank you for what it means. I thank you that there is no more clever, important thing we can pursue besides the gospel of Jesus Christ, besides knowing what he has done for us.

[35:10] Lord, let us be a humble people rooted in the grace of God, rooted in the gospel that makes you the hero. Lord, and through that, we would be a people more and more dependent and in love with you and in awe of you, of your grace and your steadfast love that never changes.

[35:35] And may it affect the way we love one another and love others. And that we would never stop sharing the gospel between each other as Christians, but we would also just love it so much we want other people, no matter who they are, to hear about this amazing news that changes us.

[35:54]  Amen.