Sermons in the John Series

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate, and I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for coming out on this holiday weekend. You guys didn't get the memo that you're supposed to be at, like, cabins or something, so you came here instead. And this is great. If you want to know how to excite a pastor, this is it, man. There's also space at the first service, if you'd like. It's good to see all of you here. This is the second part of our series in John. Last week, we opened up, and instead of just diving right into the text, I spent a week giving you some context for what's happening in the book of John and for why we are choosing as a church to focus on the book of John for this many weeks. We're going to carry this through the week after Easter. So we're going to camp out in this for a while. And so my whole goal last week was to get you excited enough about the book of John to go and to read it on your own. So we have a reading plan that we've developed. It's on the information table that you can get on your way out. I hope that if you were here last week, you grabbed one of those, or maybe you looked online and found that. If you don't have one, they're there this week. We are really encouraging you to read along with us as we go through John. One of the huge reasons to do this, if you think about this, this is a dangerous thing. If you come every week and you listen to the sermons and this is the picture that you get of John, but you never read it on your own, then I have bad news for you. You are only getting my perspective of your Jesus through John, and that's not good for you, okay? You are mostly smarter than me. Some of you are not, but most of you are smarter than me, and you need to process this on your own, okay? So that's what we're all going to do is dive into John together. This week, we open up the text, and we start the first 18 verses of the book of John, which are a sweeping narrative of the grandeur of Christ and who he is, why he came, how he's going to do it, and what that means to us. So those are the things that we're going to discuss today. This passage, John 1, 1 through 18, has been called by theologians one of the greatest adventures of religious thought ever achieved. It's a grand passage, and I'm nervous, if I'm honest, about not doing it the appropriate justice because of all that it is and all that it means to us. If you wanted to just do one sermon from the book of John, to just read one portion of the book of John and say, what is the message in John? This is the portion that you should read. John chapter 1, 1 through 18. As you read through it and it tells us about who the person of Jesus is, what he came to do, how he came to do it, and what it means to us. If you only hear one message from the whole series, I would say that this is probably the most important one because this message and this passage encapsulates all that it is that John wants to address for us. To help us understand this passage and what's going on here and why John approaches it the way that he does, I want to tell you about a trip that I had earlier this year. Earlier this year in January, my wife Jen and I took our daughter Lily to Disney World, okay? And this is the racket that Disney World has going on. We took her because if you take somebody before they're three, then their ticket is free and you get to save money. This is a great deal, right? Except my parents went, they took us. And so there's four adults paying for everything to go down there and the trip and then everything inside the park. And the money that I had set aside to pay for things in the park, I get to the end of the day, the first day, and Jen goes, how much money do we have left in our budget? I said, none, no money. We have no money left in our budget. We're not doing anything tomorrow. Like that's it, you know? But listen, we saved 200 bucks, right? Because we went early, a bunch of dummies. Disney's genius, man. So we go down there and I actually, I rehearsed the sermons before I subject you to them. And this one was always running long and I figured out it was because I was so excited about the Disney trip that I was telling you guys, I was going to tell you guys like all these details that you didn't need to know. So ask me afterwards, I'll be thrilled to talk with you about Disney. But the thing that I do want you to know is before we went, we did the best we could to give Lily some context for the trip, right? She's almost three years old. She's liked Mickey and Minnie her, her, literally her entire life. When she was a baby, she would watch them and like somehow they would bring her peace. And I'd be like, this is voodoo, man. Walt Disney, like I'm already spending money and And I will be for the next 18 years. But she loves it. So she was excited to go. Mickey and Minnie are going to be there. I get to see them. Tigger and Pooh are going to be there. It's great. So we're talking to her about those things. We're also showing her videos. Like there's YouTube videos of the rides down there, the Dumbo ride and the teacups and the different things to give her some context for what's going to happen to try to help her understand why we're excited. We did a little countdown in the kitchen. Every day she would cut like a ring off and she would count. And this is many days till we go see Mickey. And so the whole deal, we did the best we could to kind of get her ready for what we're going to experience. And so we go down there and she does phenomenal. She's loving it. She's smiling on the first day. I actually took her on a legit roller coaster. It was probably one of the few mistakes I've made as a parent so far. And I put her on the roller coaster by telling her that it was a small train and that she was going to like it. And so then I sit her there and I have to brace her little head because it's just flapping around with the G-forces. And we get done and I'm thinking she's going to scream and cry, but we got done. And I said, Lily, did you like it? She says, uh-uh. I said, why not? And she says, it was too fast, Daddy. And I was like, well, I'm pretty happy this is a response, and not just screaming. So she did phenomenal. At about three o'clock in the afternoon, we realized, gosh, you know what? We're making such good time here that we could get everything accomplished at the Magic Kingdom in day one if we pushed it, and then we could go see someplace different the next day. And so we started talking about what do we want to do? Do we want to call it? Do we want to push? What's going on? And we decided, you know what? Let's just take it easy. Let's just let her experience this. Not push her too hard. Let's not push us too hard. We're old now. I don't want to go till eight o'clock at night anymore. And so let's just go back and rest our feet. Let's let Lily rest. And then we'll come back the next day, right? And then we'll take it easy. We'll finish up the other thing. She can repeat some things and we'll just relax and just enjoy Lily enjoying the park. And that's what we decided to do. And it was a good decision. And one of the happy accidents of that decision was we got to see the joy of anticipation with Lily because she gets back that night and she starts to talk and she's telling us about her favorite rides and she loved Small World and she loved Dumbo and she loved Aladdin and she was like, these things are my favorite and I love doing this and I love doing that. And then she woke up the next day and she's super excited about what we get to do. She can't wait to go to the park and she can't wait to ride Small World. And we're like, we got a fast pass for that, so you're in luck. So it was really cool. We got the unexpected gift of anticipation for Lily. And because of that, we get to have pictures like this. This is us on the Aladdin ride. We're not even riding it yet. She's just excited that she's about to ride it. And I'm excited that she's excited. It was this great, genuine moment, right? Because she knew what was going to happen and she was really looking forward to it. Without anticipation or context, day two Lily doesn't happen. So we've got day one Lily with no context for what's about to happen to her. Just kind of some base excitement, but not really unsure what's going to happen. And then we have day two Lily who is super pumped because she knows what's up, right? Okay. As we approach John, and that's good. As we approach John, we have day one Lily and we have day two Lily. We have a group of people who really are not sure what's going on. They have a general excitement about the idea of Jesus, but they don't know who he is. And then we've got day two, Lily, which is a group of people that are really keyed up and ready for who the Messiah is and what he came to do. And so day two, Lily, the people who knew what was going on is the Jewish community to whom John was writing. John wrote to the Jewish community and the Greek community. And to the Jewish community, when you tell them in the first century AD, hey, the Messiah is here, they instantly know what that means. They know because they have a knowledge of the Old Testament. They have been for thousands of years now, generation after generation, looking forward to the coming Messiah. Every generation waits to see, is the Messiah going to be coming now? Is he going to come in our lifetime? They know the prophecies that he's going to be Emmanuel, God with us, that he will be King of Kings, Lord of Lords, that he will sit on the throne of David, that he will come from the city of David. They know all the stuff. And so when you go to a Jewish person in first century AD and you say, hey, the Messiah is here, they're day two, Lily, man. They're fired up. They know exactly what's going on. But the Greeks, they're day one, Lily. You go to them and you say, hey, good news, guys, the Messiah is here. And they're like, that's great. What's that? They have no context. They've not been expecting a Messiah. They don't know who Jesus is or what makes him a big deal. And because John wants them to understand how big of a deal it is that the Messiah arrives, he starts his gospel off in a different way than the other three gospels. See, I went back and I looked at the other three gospels, and when I looked at how Jesus was introduced, what I picked up on was the fact that in the other gospels, Jesus is presented as the Messiah. But in John's gospel, he's presented as God. The other gospels present Jesus as the Messiah. They just start off and they just say, hey, here's the genealogies. This is Jesus. He's here. He's our Messiah, and let's go. But John's gospel doesn't start off like that. John presents Jesus first as God and doesn't talk about him as the Messiah until verse 14, which we're going to get to. So this morning, we're going to move through this passage, look at who Jesus is, why he came, how he intends to accomplish the mission that he came for, and what that means for us. And so to define who Jesus is, rather than starting out with Jesus as the Messiah, John starts out like this in some of the most profound verses and impactful verses in Scripture. This is just packed with stuff. He writes this. John 1 starts out this way. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him, not anything made that was made. In the beginning was the word. So right away, the word is capitalized. It's a capital W in the Bible. So he is giving, he is personifying that word. He is saying this is representative of an entity, of a person that I'm going to tell you about. So his introduction of Jesus is the word. In the beginning, before time began at creation, there was this entity that I'm now calling the word, and it was with God, and it was God. So right away, what he tells us is the person that I'm about to tell you about was not created by God and therefore subservient to him. No, he was God and is not subservient to God the Father, but is on equal footing with him. He introduces the Trinity or the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Spoiler alert, because we don't talk about the Holy Spirit enough and because Jesus does in the Gospel of John, after this series, we're going to spend some weeks on the Holy Spirit and who he is, which should be a really comfortable series for a lot of former Presbyterians. I'm super excited about it. But he introduces Jesus like this. He says, he is the word. He was at creation. And the Jewish mind goes back to the account in Genesis, to creation. And when you look at the creation account, how did God create the earth? What did he do? He spoke. The word, his word, the word of God is the mechanism through which he wrought all of creation. Do you understand that? Jesus is the activation and the power of the Creator God in bringing about the formation of creation. It says, let there be light, and there was light. Let there be animals, and there's animals. Let there be trees, and there was trees. And it is God's Word that activates all of creation and brings about all of creation. So John is placing Jesus back in the creation narrative for both the Jew and the Greek to say, in the beginning, there was this entity, and without this entity, nothing was made. And he is the mechanism through which everything was made. So he says right away, the person that I'm going to tell you about and the rest of this Bible is divine. And he is as divine as God the Father ever was. He was not created by and therefore subservient to. He is God. He was there from the beginning. And it's important to note that when John says this and he tells us who this Jesus is that he's going to tell us about, that he is telling us who Jesus is just as much as he is telling us who he isn't. He is telling us who Jesus is just as much as he is telling us who he isn't. We see later in the gospels, Jesus asks this question of his disciples. He says, who do you say that I am? He says, some people say that I'm a prophet. Others say that I'm a teacher. Through history, we've seen people label Jesus as a moral representative, a moral guide of some sort. And Peter says, you are Christ, the Son of God. And Jesus says, yes, and on this faith, I will build my church. Okay? On this rock, I will build my church. Those questions about who Jesus is have regurgitated and rung through all of history. Those have always existed about who is this person, Jesus of Nazareth, that existed. And we've seen different cultures and even different religions and different offshoots of even Christianity explain Jesus as he was a prophet, minimize him to a prophet or minimize him to he was a good teacher or he was a good moral representative. And so we've seen efforts throughout history to reduce Jesus to less than God by calling him a prophet or a teacher so we can accept his teachings, but we don't have to accept his divinity. And John right away says, no, that's not going to work. Which by the way, Jesus, this person that we are worshiping as God, did claim to actually be God. So you can't call a dude who is lying about being God a good moral guy or a nice teacher, right? He either is or he isn't. There's no in-between. And John takes this in-between away from us right away. He says, he is divine. He was not created by and subservient to. He cannot be reduced to prophet. He cannot be reduced to teacher. He cannot be reduced to moral guide. He is divine. That's the person I'm going to tell you about. And then he moves into this next series where he talks about John. John the Baptist is coming. Next week, I'm going to preach all about John the Baptist. I'm really excited to do that because John the Baptist is one of my favorite figures in the Bible because Jesus says of John the Baptist that he is one of the greatest people, not one of, he is the greatest man ever born of a woman, which means that Jesus thought John the Baptist was the greatest man to ever live. So this week, I'd love for you to be thinking about why in the world did Jesus say that about John the Baptist? Because that's the question we're going to come back next week and answer. So I'm not going to focus on those verses this week. We're going to get to those next week. After those verses, he's told us the who. I'm going to tell you about a person who is divine, let there be no doubt about it, and this is what he's come to do. This is his mission. This is why he's here. And we can sum up his mission in verses four and five. This is what he came to do. It says, in this person that I'm talking about, in him was life. And the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it. And he goes down for several verses all the way up through to verse 16, through verse 15. And he talks about the light and what it means and what it came to do. And what we find out is that Jesus shines light in the darkness, that the darkness will not overcome it, that he is the light of the world. And that if we place our faith in this light, if we believe in him and what he came to do and who he claims to be, then we will be children of God and we are a part of God's kingdom. And this is what Jesus came to do, to be a light in the world and to claim his children back into God's family. That's what he came to do. And this theme, this idea of light runs through the book of John. So I'm not going to belabor it this morning because we're going to come back to it as we go through the series, but there is a theme of light throughout the book of John. If you read it and you pay attention, what you'll see is a bunch of different instances where the disciples go to Jesus and they go, hey, this thing is happening. Why is this happening? Shouldn't we do this? And Jesus' response is, no, in the daylight or in the day or in the light, this is how we behave because it will not always be light, but right now it is because I am here. So it's this theme that runs through John. And last week I pointed out to you that when Judas Iscariot, the disciple that betrayed Christ, does the thing that he does, that there's this ominous sentence in the text that says, and it was night because the daylight has changed. So this theme of day and night and light and darkness moves through the gospel of John. And so he's introducing that theme here, that Jesus is the light of the world. But what I want us to understand this morning is that Jesus came to shed light in the dark places and that the darkness will not overcome it. And what does that mean for us? Well, I think that the light that Jesus sheds is twofold. First, he sheds light on who we are and our ingrained need for him. He sheds light on you and your sin in your life. Before we know Jesus, we have this loose understanding that if there is a God, that he's probably not very happy with me for some of the decisions that I've made in my life. And then when we see the light of Jesus next to us, and we read through the gospel, and we see who he is, and we compare ourselves to his standards, what we realize in the light of Jesus, in the face of his light, is that we fall woefully short of the standards that Jesus establishes for us, that we can never be as good as he is, and he sheds light on the sin in our life. I even had somebody this week in my men's Bible study make the comment that, man, I'm really learning that even the good things that I do as I suss them out and figure out the motives that push me to those places, those are gross and selfish motives that really negate the good things that I'm doing. And I'm like, good news for you, that's Jesus's life shining in your light, showing you your desperate need for him. And the good news for us is that it's twofold. It doesn't stop at just illuminating our need for him in light of our sin, but then also illuminates his grace to us in the face of our sin. That's the twofold light of Christ. To illuminate for us our need for him because of our sin, and then to show us his grace in light of our sin. And that if we trust in that grace, we can be a part of his kingdom and rescued to heaven for all of eternity. That's the promise there by Jesus being the light. So that's why he came. That's what he came to do, to be the light of the world, to illuminate for you your need for Christ, and then to illuminate the grace that he offers in light of your need. Then we get to verse 14. In verse 14, we see the personification of Jesus. This is when we're introduced to Jesus. This is when John has gotten everyone up to speed. Now everyone is day two lily. Now everyone is ready to meet this person who has existed for all of creation, who is divine, who is the activator of creation, who is the light of the world and is coming now to shed light on us and on his grace. Now everyone has the proper context to really understand and be grateful for what happens in verse 14. This is the how. How was Jesus going to accomplish what he said he was going to accomplish? Verse 14. And the word became flesh. That's a big stinking deal. And the word, capital W, word. The person that I've been talking to you about, the divine one who has a heavenly form, has condescended to become one of us. What he's talking about here is the condescension of Christ. He's talking about the condescension of Christ. The Word became flesh. And we often have a problem with that word, condescension. We don't like to be condescended to. We're told not to condescend to others. But make no doubt about it, Jesus gave up His heavenly form to take on our form. The Word became flesh. See, only God in the history of gods and any other story and any other narrative in the history of mankind to condescend and give up his heavenly form to us. I didn't do this in the first service, but I just, I want you to see this. Revelation chapter 18 and 19. Let me tell you who Jesus is. This is Jesus. This is heavenly Jesus. In the Gospels, we see this meek and mild person who has taken on the infirmities and the frailties of humanity. He is the Lamb of God. But in Revelation 19, we see the Lion of Judah. John writes this in Revelation 19, Oh man, that's Jesus. That's heavenly Jesus. That's the one that's going to come one day and make all the sad things untrue and all the wrong things right and exact justice on those that did not honor God in their life. That's Jesus. And what I want you to understand is when John says the word became flesh, that this is the form that he's giving up to take on our form, to come and live with us, to come and be one of us, to condescend and understand our frailties and be faced with the temptations that we are faced with. And this is essential. His condescension and his taking on of flesh is essential to our understanding of salvation because unless he does that, unless he comes down and he takes on human form, he cannot rescue and reconcile us back to God. Because to qualify for a perfect sacrifice that would cover over our sins, he has to live a faultless life. He has to come down and he has to face the same temptations that we do. He has to face the same infirmities that we do. That's why the Bible tells us that if you are faced with a temptation, that you need to know that you cannot be faced with something that Jesus has never been faced with. And because he faced that temptation down for you, you now do not have to succumb to that temptation. You understand? That anything that tempts you in your life, anything that would rally against you in your life, anything that would seek to overtake you and pull you away from God in your life, that that is not too great for Jesus to overcome because he has already overcome it, because the word became flesh and he condescended to us and he gave up that heavenly form for a time to come down here and face that temptation for you so that when you faced it later, you could lean on him and know that you could be victorious. He comes and in John 11, he weeps with us in our tragedy and in our pain. He ministers to us and he prays for us. And he trains the disciples to lead his church, his kingdom, and he hands the keys of the kingdom off to them as he ascends into heaven. And his ministry on earth is the reason that we sit here over 2,000 years later and have the opportunity to learn from one of the disciples that he trained. We need the incarnation of Christ so that he could be the sacrifice for us, so that he could not only, through his example, illuminate our need for him, but through his sacrifice, illuminate his grace to our need. Do you see? We have to have the personification of Jesus in human form. We have to have his incarnation. The word has to become flesh or the whole thing falls apart. So, he gave up his heavenly form. He gave up sitting at the right hand of the Father. He is crucified on the cross where he says, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because for the first time in eternity, he was separated from God the Father for you. And then he says, tetelestai, it is finished. The debt is paid in full. I have accomplished what I came to accomplish. And then he passes on. We have to have the personal incarnation of Jesus for our salvation to work, for our faith to exist. It's absolutely essential. So in the beginning was the Word. That's who he is. He is God. He is as much God as anything has ever been God. He came to shed a light on your need for him and his grace in face of that need. And then he condescended to human form to take on your frailties and your infirmities so that he might die for you and make a path. And then one day he's coming back as this heavenly Jesus to rectify everything. That's who he is. That's why he came. That's how he's going to do it. And then John doesn't finish there. If he finished there, that's enough. If he just stops there and he just says, there's a God in heaven that I'm calling the word and he's going to illuminate, he's going to shed light in the dark places and the darkness will not overcome it. And he took on human form to deliver you back to heaven. If that's all we learn about him, that's enough. But John doesn't stop there. He leads into this great verse in verse 16. It's becoming one of my favorite verses in all of scripture. He writes this, and this is what it means to you. And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. That word fullness there, if you look it up in the Greek, I'm not going to quote you the Greek word because it's obnoxious when pastors do that. I'm not smarter than you. I just have Google. What it means there is from his fullness, we have received grace upon grace. That word fullness means the sum total of all that God is. The sum total of all that God is. From his fullness, from the sum of all that God is, from everything that we've learned in the sweeping narrative of God, that he is divine, that he is the mode and the medium of creation, that he has wrought the creation through himself. Without him, nothing exists. He is as much God as anything has ever been God. He is the light of the world. He condescended to take on frailty for us that he might save us. And from this fullness of an understanding of exactly who this Messiah is that I am about to tell you about from the next 21 chapters, from this fullness, from the sum of all of God is, we have all received grace upon grace. And then he goes back in 17 and 18, he says, until Jesus came, everybody had to follow the law. Everybody was subjected to the law of Moses. You had to follow these rules or you didn't get in. And now that Jesus is here, what we see is that we can't follow the rules. We'll never be able to do it right. And in light of our failings, we see his grace. So we have grace upon grace. There was grace provided and what the law did for us in the Old Testament and then covered over that grace is a larger grace of our salvation where now it's not a performance-based salvation. it's just a faith-based salvation. And we look at these truths of Jesus and we go, I believe you. I think you're telling me the truth. And he says, good, then I offer you grace and I claim you to be my child. And that word grace there is an important word. The easiest understanding of grace is to get something that you don't deserve. Grace is when we receive something that we haven't earned. Mercy is when we don't get something that we do deserve, but grace is when we get something that we do not deserve. And so what we're seeing here, when we think of this grace that we receive from Jesus, our mind probably goes first to our salvation. I don't deserve my salvation. I've done nothing to earn it. I've done nothing to deserve for Jesus to condescend, for the Word to become flesh and take on my frailty so that I might know Him. I don't deserve that. He didn't have to do that for me. He did that because He loved me. That's grace, and we acknowledge that as grace. But this doesn't say just grace. It says grace upon grace. And what I want you to see this morning is that from the fullness of God, from all that Jesus is, we don't just receive salvation, although that would be enough. But I want you to see that every good and perfect thing in your life that God has given you is grace, is something that you have that you do not deserve, that you have not earned. Everything in your life that brings you joy is God's grace in your life for however long it brought you joy. All those things are God's grace. Do you understand? As I think back through my life, I remember some moments that stick out. I can remember being up at the altar for my wedding day and watching the back doors open and the sun illuminate Jen in her white dress and knowing that that was the woman I was going to marry and walk through life with. And I began to cry right away because I still couldn't believe it. That moment is God's grace. Years later, I can remember learning that we were pregnant and going to the doctor and hearing the heartbeat of Lily. That moment is God's grace. I can remember having Lily and Lily laying on Jen's chest and me hugging her and looking at this woman who's now the mother of my child. That moment is God's grace. When we get those moments, they are God's grace in our life and you have them too. And what you need to understand is your own wisdom and your own goodness didn't bring those about, those treasures that we have, those moments of joy. When we have good enough friends that we can sit around and laugh and be vulnerable and real and be comfortable and be ourselves, that's God's grace to us. We have church that we enjoy. That's God's grace. We have small group that we enjoy. That's God's grace. And we have children. That's God's grace. All the goodness that we have in our life is a result of the fullness of God acting in you to bring about grace. Things that you have that are good that we did not earn or did not bring about because of ourselves. Those are God's grace. And so my hope is that this morning as you leave, you will walk in gratitude for God's grace. That you will understand that it's the fullness of God. It's all that He is. Everything that He was. Everything that He came to do and how He came to do it. That this full understanding of God rots for you the good things in your life that you did not earn and probably do not deserve, and that those things are God's grace to you, and from his fullness we have received grace upon grace. And even those of us who are walking through the hardest of times know that God still offers grace even through those things. And from His fullness, we have all, all of us, not some of us, not the chosen ones, not the believers, all of us received grace upon grace, gift upon gift, joy upon joy, goodness upon goodness. My hope is that you will walk in gratitude for God's grace in your life as you marvel at the fullness of Him that brings that about for you. Let's pray. Father, we love You and we are amazed by you. We marvel at you. That you would allow your son to give up his heavenly form to come down here to save us, to be one of us, to model for us, to carry our griefs and our infirmities and our temptations, God. That you would allow him to die for us so that we might know you. God, I pray that there would be this progressive revelation, these just waves of understanding that kind of hit us, God, as we go through our weeks of just all the goodness that you have allowed us in our life. that we would turn in gratitude for you for this grace upon grace that you offer us. God, we are so grateful for you. I pray for the people who are in this room right now that you would be in their stresses and in their concerns and in their heartbreak and in whatever is going on in their life and that all of those things would serve to draw us more nearly to you, Father. It's in your son's name I pray these things. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am the pastor here. I know a lot of you guys are wondering, did Nate do that voiceover? Yeah, I did. I did, actually. I worked really hard on that and my accent. But I am so excited about this series, about the book of John, about spending. We're going to spend 13 weeks in the gospel of John, and I really couldn't be more elated to do it. And I will tell you a couple things. First off, the whole point of this morning, like Kyle alluded to in the announcements, is to get you excited about John, to help you understand why this is such a big deal, why this is such a big book, why it's important enough to stop and spend 13 weeks in. I really haven't been excited for a series, this excited for a series, in a really long time. Part of the reason I'm excited is because I feel like we've been waiting to do this as a church. I've been waiting to do this as your pastor. I told you guys last week, if you were here, that when I came in April of 2017, that I looked back through all of the series that had happened at the church to see where you guys had been and what you guys had been learning about to make sure that I wouldn't be repetitive moving forward and to see if there was any gaps that I felt like I needed to teach. And what I saw was that we spent a lot of time in the Gospels. The Gospels are the books of the Bible that tell the story of Jesus' life. It's the first four books in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And so you had spent a lot of time there, and you'd spend a lot of time in a book called Acts that kind of tells the story of the early church. It's a fun book. It's a storytelling book. It's the only one in the New Testament. And so it's a good book to be in. But I felt like there was so much more that we needed to study and know about the scripture. So we spent time in the Old Testament focusing on characters like David, and then the names of God, and then how the Old Testament points to Jesus. And so we've done that for a long time, and now it's time as a church to dive into Jesus, to dive into the story of his life, to acquaint ourselves corporately with our Savior, with someone who loves us and who died for us. And I'm really elated to do this. But I will also say this, and I'll remind you of this here at the end of the service. As I sat down to prep for the series and outline it, one of the things I realized is there is no way I can teach everything that I want to teach from the book of John. There is no way that I can do justice to the book of John. When I was growing up, my pastor, a guy named Buddy Hoffman, who I adore and respect immensely, he passed away a couple of years ago, but I consider myself lucky to grow up under his teaching. And my passion for scripture, I think, was ignited a lot by him. He spent four years going through the book of John, every Sunday morning and every Sunday night, until his elders finally sat him down and were like, dude, we need some Proverbs or something. You've got to switch it up. So if he could do that, I couldn't do four years, but I could do more than 13 weeks. I sat down to outline the series, and I just started by opening the Bible and just writing down everything that I saw. I was like, oh, I got to teach about that. Oh, yeah, that can be a sermon. Oh, yeah, they need to know about this. And I got through the first two chapters, and it was already like an 18-week series. So this really, if I'm being honest, isn't us going through the book of John. It's really Nate's 13 favorite things in the book of John. So to really get all of it, you're going to have to work along with us, okay? And we're going to get to that at the end. But I just want to say that as a preface to the series. As we preface the series this week and we launch into what does God say to us through this book, I want to answer some fundamental questions about why we're even doing this. I think one of the fundamental questions that we should answer is, why should we study a gospel? What is interesting to us about the gospels? Why were they written? Why did these books matter in some ways, in a different way than all the rest of Scripture? And so that's the first question we're going to answer. And I think John gives us that answer, at least the beginnings of an answer, in the 20th chapter of his book. The Gospel of John is 21 chapters long. And at the end of the second to last chapter, he throws in this statement, verse 31. And he says, I have written these things that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. So he says, I've written all of this down, my experiences with Jesus down for this reason, so that you, you being whoever reads this ever, may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. So he wrote this so that you believe that Jesus was who he says he was. He wants you, he wrote this down so that you would know that Jesus is real and Jesus was who he says he was. And I don't know if you ever thought about it this way, and this is why we need to study a gospel and why Jesus matters so much to us. Do you understand that Jesus is the hinge on which all of history swings? He's the fulcrum on which all of history rests, that he matters more. He stands alone in history as the single most influential figure to ever be on the planet. Do you understand that? Do you understand that all of history and all of faith really boils down to two questions? These are the only questions that matter. Was Jesus real, and was he telling us the truth? That's all that matters. Was Jesus real? Did a guy named Jesus of Nazareth actually walk the planet 2,000 years ago? And if he existed, was that guy telling us the truth about himself? Because what he claims is that he is the incarnate son of the creator God who came to reconcile our relationship back to that God and that all reconciliation that we know as salvation flows through him because of what he did while he was on this earth, because he died and resurrected and defeated death and sin, and we'll see that later. Because of all of that, we can have a faith that we place in God if he's real, because that's what he claimed. So we have to answer those two questions. Was Jesus real, and was he telling us the truth? And I would say to you this morning, if you were here and you're not a believer, if you were here and you wouldn't call yourself a Christian, maybe there's someone close to you who kind of encourages you to come to church and so you come to do the nice thing. First of all, good for you for doing the nice thing. But if you're considering faith, dipping your toe into the waters of faith, unsure about faith, I would tell you that the very first thing you need to figure out is the answer to those questions. When I do my research, when I look at history, based on all the evidence, did Jesus, did he really exist? And then, do I believe that he was telling us the truth? Because if the answers to those questions are no, I don't think he existed. I don't think he was telling us the truth. Then nothing else matters, right? Nothing else matters. The Old Testament doesn't matter. What we understand about God doesn't matter. Nothing else in all of Christendom and the way that we understand the world and our worldview and the way that we understand faith, none of that matters if Jesus wasn't real and he wasn't telling us the truth. But if he was real and he is telling us the truth, that changes everything. Because that man during his life is recorded as affirming the first 39 books of the Bible that we call the Old Testament, that he called the Talmud. He affirms those, the law and the prophets, as scripture, as God breathed. He had the same 39 books that we have today by the time he was on earth. They were assembled around 250 BC and the people in Jerusalem said, yep, this is the holy text. And so Jesus affirms the holy text. So if Jesus is real and he is who he says he was, then he said he himself believed that the Old Testament was God breathed and was the word of God. So we can believe it too. If he's real and he is who he says he was, then he actually died and he was actually resurrected and he actually went to heaven. And the church that he leaves us in Acts is actually true and that was really the kingdom that he came to start that goes through the rest of history. It's the kingdom that we sit in now. If Jesus is real, then all of history before him looked forward to anticipating a Messiah, and all of history after him looks back to him as the Messiah and looks forward to his return, if he's real. So Jesus really is the hinge of all of history. We have to figure out what we think of him. We have to understand whether or not we can believe him. I think those questions are the most fundamental and the most important questions for anyone to answer in their life. If you've never answered them for yourself, it is worth the effort to do it. I promise. Get those answers for yourself. Because in Jesus, what we see is these essential qualities that we absolutely have to have. They're revealed in the Gospels, and it's why we study the Gospels. What I want you guys to understand is Jesus is the divine exemplar. He is the divine exemplar of our faith. An exemplar is just a fancy word for the best possible perfect model. And we see both of these things in the gospel. If you really want a fancy theological term, it's called the hypostatic union, that he is 100% God and 100% man. And we will never really understand how that all works out. But both elements are necessary and both elements are displayed in Scripture. And we need him to be divine, because without his divinity, we do not have the faith that he gave us. Okay? Without his divinity, there is no faith. Right? We understand that? And then, if we don't get his example, if he doesn't live for 33 years, three of which are really highly recorded, if we don't see the gospel stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, then we never get his example, and we need his example because without it, we have no perfect model for the faith that he founded. He is the exemplar, and that's essential for us as well. Without Jesus, we get other pictures of the faith. We get Paul, who may have struggled with arrogance. We get Moses, who may have struggled with anger. We get Esther, who had her own struggles. We get Ruth, who had her own struggles. We get them throughout Scripture, but they're all imperfect models. Jesus is the perfect model of your faith. So because he is the hinge of history, because he's the most influential person to ever live, we should really, really, really want to know everything we can about him on a more personal level than that. Jesus is your Savior. If you're a believer, he's your Savior. He is the one person to whom everyone else looks. He is the one person on whom all of Scripture is focused, whether it's looking forward to him or looking back to him or anticipating him again. Understanding Jesus is fundamental to your faith. That's why the prayer of Paul for all of his churches is that you would know Jesus along with the saints in the breadth and the depth and the fullness of the knowledge of Christ. It's why he prays it over and over again, and he praises the churches throughout the ancient world for their knowledge of Jesus, because it all boils down to how well we know Jesus. Jesus says in John 15, and we're going to spend a whole week on this, that if we abide in him, that he will abide in us, and that we will bear much fruit. And all of life boils down to focusing on Jesus. The author of Hebrews tells us to run our race, to throw off the sin and the weight that entangles us. And how do we do that? By focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If you are a believer, there is no element of your faith that is more important or fundamental to you than understanding the person of Jesus and getting to know him in a very real way. And there is no better way to do that than the Gospels. If you are considering the faith, and you wouldn't say yet that you're a believer, the best thing to consider in the faith is who was the person of Jesus. It's essential to us that we study him and that we know him. I heard somebody say one time, a scholar once said, you couldn't possibly claim to be a Christian who knows Jesus if you don't read all four Gospels a minimum of once a year. I'm not espousing that as true. I would never say someone is not a Christian who doesn't know Jesus. That seems pretty inflammatory. But the attitude behind it is, if we believe, we have got to dig into these things and get to know the person of Christ. So, because we see that studying the gospel is so essential, something that we have to do, we should want to do, the question becomes, well, why John? There's four options there. They all do a great job of it. So why do we choose John? Why have I chosen John for us to go through? Well, I believe that John has a unique relationship with Jesus. He has a unique relationship with our Savior. And I think that because there's clues dropped all throughout his gospel that show us that this is true. First of all, one of the things I would point to is Jesus in his life had about 100 to 120 people kind of following him around wherever he went. Sometimes we don't know that or we forget about that. We think about the 12 disciples that were with him all the time, but really there was others around him, 100 to 120, that followed him all over the place. Actually, in Acts, when Judas has to get replaced, one of the requirements to be the replacement disciple, which ends up being a guy named Matthias, is he had to have been here from the very beginning. So there's people for all three years of his ministry that followed him around that were just never mentioned. Those are people of great faith. Then there was the 12 disciples, the 12 that he called, and we know the 12 disciples. But then there was an inner circle of three disciples, the only disciples that he gave nicknames to, Peter, James, and John. When Jesus met Peter, his name was Simon, but he renamed him Cephas or Cephas, which means rocky, which is translated Peter. So Jesus named some dude Rocky because he just kind of had an attitude that was like ready, fire, aim, right? And so Jesus was like, you're Rocky. Then he gives James and John the coolest nickname in all the Bible. They were brothers, and their dad was named Zebedee. And so they were called the sons of Zebedee, but his nickname for them was the sons of thunder. Come on, man. That's awesome. I want to be a son of thunder. I'm just Nate. That's lame. But they get the best nickname in the Bible. They're in the inner circle. They have access to Jesus that even the other disciples who see him every day do not have. Little things like, and it's not a little thing, it's actually a huge thing. And some of you know the story and some of you don't, and that's okay. But at the end of Jesus's life, he's about to be arrested and he goes to pray this incredible prayer in what's called the Garden of Gethsemane. And he leaves the disciples and he grabs three of them and he says, will you guys come pray with me? And John's one of those disciples. Throughout the entire crucifixion process, John is present there. He had access to Jesus that nobody else had. We'll see an intimate moment between he and Jesus at a meal here in a minute. John was so comfortable with Jesus that his mom felt total comfort in asking Jesus for special favors for her boy. They were walking into Jerusalem the last week of Jesus's life to begin Holy Week. In Christendom, we understand Holy Week kind of sets in motion the gears that bring about crucifixion and resurrection, and then we celebrate Easter. And so they're walking into the city. Jesus has been being welcomed as a king. One of the things you'll see in the gospel as we go through it is nobody, my contention is, nobody understood who Jesus was or what he came to do. Nobody really understood Jesus except for two people, Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist. I don't think anybody else got it until after he came back to life. They expect Jesus to walk into Jerusalem. All the prophecies are that he's going to be a king. So they expect him to walk into Jerusalem, sit on the throne of David, overthrow Roman rule, and make Israel awesome again and this world's superpower, and Jesus is going to be the king of the world. And so walking into Jerusalem, John's mom is behind Jesus tugging on his tunic going, hey, when you take over the planet, can John be like your vice president? Moms, man, forever. They're all the same. Moms are the best. That's why we have a day for you guys. Fathers have a day for you guys because we felt bad about dads, but moms, they deserve their day, right? Because they've always done that. That's how comfortable she was. She felt like she could ask for that from Jesus. John actually records that he was the first disciple to the tomb. After Jesus dies and is resurrected, John records that Mary Magdalene was the first one to the tomb, but then she goes back to the disciples and she goes, hey, there's nobody there. And so two of the disciples take off running, John and Peter, right? Two of the very close ones. And John makes sure to record in his gospel 60 years after it happened because he's a dude. We started running together, but after a while, the one that Jesus loved left behind Peter and got ahead of him. So he's like, hey, just so we know, for all of history, I won, all right? Like I got there first and had enough time to review the tomb and fold some stuff up before Peter ever gets there. He was the first one to the empty tomb. He was so close to Jesus that when Jesus was hanging on the cross and said very little because of the excruciating pain that it required to speak, he looked at John. And John was the lone disciple around. He looked at John, who was standing next to Mary, his mother. And he says, Mary, behold your son. John, behold your mother. And what he's saying is, John, take care of my mom for me. Especially in that society where old women had no way to make a wage and they were entirely reliant on their families to care for them, this was a huge responsibility. And he looks at John, of all the people that he's met in his life, of all the people that he knows, he looks at John and he says, take care of my mom. Makes him the executor of his will. Remarkably close. And then we have this moment in John chapter 13 that I think impacted John for the rest of his life. It gives us a picture of the relationship that Jesus had with him. In John chapter 13, what's happening is the disciples are reclining at the table. And when the Bible says reclining at the table, for us, it really just means like drooping in your seat, probably with your legs crossed and just kind of slouched down like you own the joint. Okay, that's what it looks like when I recline at the table. But when they reclined at the table, it literally meant that they were kind of laying down on their side with their elbow out and eating off the table like this, kind of in a pinwheel situation, like chest to back. Not totally spooning, but closer than you'd want to be, okay? And that's how they're reclining at the table. And in this meal, it's before Holy Week, before things are set in motion, he looks at the disciples and he says, one of you is going to betray me. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be a disciple in that moment. To go, what? Who? Who would betray you? But he says, one of you is going to betray me. And Peter, of course, because he's Peter, wants to know immediately. I love Peter so much. I relate to him so much. He wants to know immediately, but he knows he can't just brutishly ask in front of everyone. So he hits up John, like in elementary school. Hey, John, figure it out. He says, hey, John, ask Jesus who it is. Who's it going to be? Because he knows that John has Jesus' ear. It's a tip of the cap to the relationship that Peter knows they share. And John leans presumably back to Jesus. And he says, who's going to betray you? And Jesus says, it's the one that I give this morsel to. And he takes the bread and he dips it and he hands it to Judas. And John knows. And he's the only one that knows. Because Jesus trusted him with that secret. And then I'll say it now because we're not going to get to it later because there's just so much. But this incredible moment happens. He gives it to Judas. And when he gives it to Judas, it says that Satan swept into him. So now Jesus is eye to eye with Satan. And he looks at him and he says, what you're about to do, do it quickly. Incredibly intense sentence. And if we're reading too fast, we don't get it. What you're about to do, go and do it quickly. And then it says, and then it was night. And the whole tone of the book in Jesus' life changes. Because before then it had been light. It's an incredible moment there. And right after that moment, Jesus offers a profound teaching to only the disciples who remain, to only the faithful ones who will now carry his kingdom forward because Judas has been exposed and he's now gone. It says the disciples didn't know what he was talking about. They thought when he said, go and do it quickly, and they thought maybe he's going to get some money for a meal or something like that. They didn't know, but John knew. And so John was really paying attention to what happened. And then Jesus gives them, the faithful disciples, this teaching. And he says to them in John 13, and you can just listen. He says, little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me. And just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, where I'm going, you cannot come because he's going to death. They don't understand this yet, but that's what he's telling them. He says this, It's the whole commandment. It's the new commandment. It even supersedes the commandment to love God and to love others. It's the new one. Love one another. Love, love, love. It's the final commandment that Jesus gives. It's the only new commandment that he gives. And it touched John so much that at the end of his life when he was writing the other epistles, John, first, second, and third John that we have at the end of the New Testament, you know that 1st John, if you open it up and you read it, it is a commentary on these two verses, on that one teaching, love one another. That is how the world will know that you are my disciples, love one another. If you go in your Bible and you open up 1st John, it is a commentary, it is an exposition of what Jesus teaches right here that stuck with him so profoundly that he writes about it as an old man wanting everybody to understand what Jesus was teaching in that moment that mattered so much to him. If you open up 1 John and you read it, what does it say over and over again? If you say that you love Jesus but you hate your brother, then you are a liar and the truth is not in you. If you do love Jesus, then you will love your brother. And if you love your brother, then you must love Jesus. It's an entire exposition on this moment. And then there's this other moment that I really love in Revelation. John goes on from here. He goes on. He takes care of Jesus' mom. And all the disciples we see in Acts, a lot stay central to Jerusalem. Some disperse and begin to preach the gospel in other places. But John, we learn, is the only disciple that did not die a martyr's death. All the other disciples were put to death for their faith. But John was allowed by God to live for many, many years into maybe his 70s or 80s. A lot of people believe that John was maybe the youngest disciple. Some put him as young as potentially 10 years old when Jesus called him. A lot of scholars believe that the disciples were high school boys and college freshmen when Jesus called them. Can you imagine that? Leaving the keys of the kingdom to them? Yikes. I don't know that that's true, but a lot of scholars believe that that's true. And that means that John has a lot of time between when Jesus passes to remember back. And he's got a lot of years of ministry and a lot of preaching and a lot of writing and a lot of influencing. And he discipled early church leaders like Polycarp and set in motion the vehicle of the church. He was like the first real church father. And at the end of his life, he's on exile. He's in exile on the island of Patmos, somewhere around 93 AD, 60 years now after Jesus has passed. And all of these years, he's preached about his Jesus. He's taught other people about his Jesus. He's taught them about his best friend and his hero and this man that he loved so much that he has devoted his entire life for. And now he's in exile, remembering and writing and looking forward to when he finally gets to meet his Savior again. And the Holy Spirit comes to him in this season and sweeps him up and takes him to heaven. And he says, here, I want you to write down the things that you see. And that book becomes Revelation. And at the beginning of Revelation, we have this incredible glimpse of the relationship between John and Jesus, where they are reunited. And I'm going to read. You don't have to turn there. You can just listen. John is in heaven, and he's seeing all of these visions. And then he sees this man that scares the fire out of him. And this like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like flames of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace. And his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword. And his face was like the sun, shining in full strength. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. He didn't know yet that it was Jesus. And he falls on his feet, terrified, because he's never seen the heavenly reunited with his Jesus. He knows that it's Jesus' hand on his shoulder and that it's Jesus' voice speaking to him. And the one that he had lived his life in memory of and devoted to and longed to be reunited with was there, and he finally meets him in his heavenly form. And it's this man, with those unique perspectives, that writes us the gospel of John. We study John because it gives us a unique perspective of Jesus. How could it not? You know, in John's gospel, he never refers to himself as John. He refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And some scholars argue that this is evidence that he didn't actually write the book himself, that somebody wrote it for him, because what an arrogant thing to call yourself the disciple whom Jesus loved. But man, as I read that and I think about the relationship that John had with Jesus, I don't think it's an arrogant thing at all. I think that John, in his old age, he's 50 or 60 years removed from Jesus. He's in his 70s. He's in the twilight of his life, particularly with life expectancy back then. He was an old man reflecting back on his early years. And as he wrote this, he refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And I think that he uses that not because he was proud of himself or somehow arrogant. I think he was astounded that he was the one that Jesus chose to love and reveal himself to in that way. I think as he thought back that he was touched and humbled, I can't believe that Jesus trusted me with the secret of Judas. I think he was touched and humbled. I can't believe that my Savior, that my hero asked me to care for his mom. I can't believe that he swept me up and spoke to me in Revelation. I can't believe that all the other disciples have passed, and for some reason he's allowed me to shepherd the early church, his kingdom, his building into the next age of leaders. I can't believe that my life has included these amazing privileges. I cannot believe I'm the disciple that Jesus has chosen to love. And so he calls himself that. And that's the man that offers us a perspective of his Jesus. By the time he wrote this, all the other gospels had been written, and they had begun to circulate in the churches. So we have every reason to believe that John had actually read the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And those are called synoptic gospels, and they're different than John's gospel. They're synoptic because they tell the same story with the same chronology from beginning to end. And so what John is able to do is read those and go, okay, here's what you need to know about my Jesus. Here's what you need to know about my best friend. He is a man in his old age who loves Jesus, who knows him maybe better than anyone has ever known him, writing down a book that you may believe that Jesus was who he says he was, telling you, you know what? If you want to know Jesus, then here's what you really need to know. Look at these things. That's why his book is unique. That's why the other books include parables, pithy sayings that are memorable teachings of Jesus, and John doesn't include any of those. In John, we get these big sweeping monologues. We get these real long teachings from Jesus. In the other books, we have the long teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, but John doesn't share the Sermon on the Mount because it's already been taken care of. Instead, he shares with you these big, long conversations like the one that he has with Nicodemus in chapter 3, the Pharisee that comes to see him at night because he's ashamed and embarrassed that he might actually believe in this Jesus guy. So Jesus has a conversation with him that John records. We get stories that we don't get in the other Gospels, like when Jesus' closest friend in the world, Lazarus, dies and Jesus goes to raise him from the dead and comfort his sisters in the city of Bethany. And we get this verse, John 11, 35, the shortest one in the Bible that says, Jesus wept, that answers for us for all time. How does Jesus respond in our tragedy? Well, he comes and he weeps with us. We know that because John tells us so. We get in John these I am statements. There's no parables there, and there's not as much figurative language, but he says, I am again and again. I am the bread of life. I am the living water. I am the good shepherd. Over and over again, we see these things. We get the miracle at Cana, where Jesus' first public miracle is to keep the party going. You guys do with that whatever you want to, but it's in there. We get one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, John 17. It's called the High Priestly Prayer. Right before Jesus dies, he prays for them, and he prays for the church. And get this, 2,000 years ago, he prayed for you. And it's recorded in John 17. We have all these things in his gospel that we don't get in the others. And the others are not unimportant. They're incredibly important. And we can't get a holistic picture of Jesus outside of those gospels. But John is an old man in his old age reflecting back on the person that he's loved the most in his entire life saying, here's what you need to know about my Jesus. Here's what you need to know about my friend and my hero. Unique and it stands alone. And it's an amazing book. And it's worthy of our consideration. And like I said, the whole point of this morning is to get you to a place where you go, I want to know what John says about Jesus. Wherever you are, if you're dipping your toes in the water of faith, start with John and see what he says about the person you're considering. If you call yourself a Christian, then read John and look at what he says about his Savior that you love so much and learn about him. And like I said at the beginning, this is not a series working through John. I'm going to skip around and share stories and it's going to be good. I really, really hope. But if you want to get the most you can out of this series and you have got to do the work on your own on a daily basis. So I made a reading plan for us for John. There's one, they're in the lobby, they're on the information table. The one thing I want you to do from this sermon is leave and grab one of those. There's gonna be one online, they're gonna be in a couple of different places. I've even, I want you so badly to read the book of John with us that uniquely I've included a catch-up day, okay? Every Saturday it just says, catch up, man. I know you missed one, I did too. Let's catch up. Do it. Use the YouVersion app. If you don't know what that is, Google it. Use that app, and you can listen to it in your car, okay? If reading is hard for you or you're lazy like me, just listen to it in your car, man. Listen to it on your jog. But it's two chapters a week. It's easy. The whole goal for you leaving today is to be excited enough about the book of John and what God's servant John has to say about his Jesus that you're willing to dig into it on your own. And then together as a church, we're going to learn more about who our Jesus is. And my prayer for you is that you will know him, Jesus, more deeply and more intimately than you ever have by the time we get on the other side of Easter this year. I hope that you'll do that with us. Let me pray, and then we're going to take communion together. Father, we love you. We are so grateful. We're so grateful for the book of John. I thank you for inspiring him to write down what he did. Thank you for giving him the perspective that would allow him to remember the things that he remembered. God, thank you even for preserving it through all of history, through the years and through the wars and through all of the torrent of the times, God, that you brought this book down to us. Thank you for the diligent scribes that recorded it, that protected it, that gave their lives for it, that we might learn from it. God, I pray that you would reveal yourself to us in this book in incredible ways, that we would see the tenderness of your son, that we would see your heart revealed as it's poured out in the form of him, that we would come to value the spirit that he's left us behind, and more than anything, that we would come to know you in an intimate way through this series and through this study. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. In just a minute, we're going to take communion together, but as we do, this is probably the appropriate place to acknowledge that earlier this week, a young boy, 17-year-old, named Leighton Holidayiday passed away overnight in the early mornings of Wednesday. A lot of us know the family and know his dad, Craig Holliday, was the founding pastor of Grace. And so the community grieves, and Grace in particular grieves with the holidays with Craig and Rhett and his brother Cody. And so this afternoon there's going to be a funeral at NRCA at 3 o'clock. Everyone's invited, and the family would appreciate your attendance and your prayers and your support. And I mention it now because we're about to do communion, and today is a tragic day. It's been a tragic week. One of the most sad things in life is to bury a child. And so today, there's nothing that makes today not sad. But here's the thing. Because of communion, because of what it represents, today isn't just sad. It is tragic. But because of Jesus, it's not just tragic. Because Jesus defeated death and holds the keys to hell and Hades, this day is not just tragic. It can also be hopeful. And that's an amazing thing. So when we take communion today, we remember the death of Christ that united us with our creator. But what we also remember is that this was the moment that Jesus defeated death and took the sting out of days like today and made them not just tragic, but also made them hopeful, which is a remarkable thing. As the disciples were reclined around the table the night that Jesus was arrested, he took the bread and he broke it and he says, this is my body that was broken for you. Every time you eat of this, do it in remembrance of me. And then he took the wine and he poured it out and he says, this is my blood that was poured out for you. Every time you drink it, do it in remembrance of me. So I'm going to pray and we're going to take communion. And as we do, as we always do, we reflect on how grateful we are that Jesus, through this breaking of his body and through the spilling of his blood, reunites us with him. But today we also are grateful for the fact that through this act he defeated death and Hades and that days like today aren't just tragic. They can be hopeful too. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for your son. We thank you for sacrificing him for us. We thank you that he rose again and defeated death and hell. We thank you that he has taken the sting out of sin and says to death, where are your shackles? That it has been defeated. God, we are so grateful that you've saved us from ourselves, from our own foolishness at times, that from our own choices, God, you reunite us with you and we are so grateful for that. God, we are also grateful that you take the sting out of tragedy and that you promise a future that is delivered by Jesus. Thank you for communion and everything that it means. In Jesus' name, amen.