31 And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. 32 And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers1 are outside, seeking you.” 33 And he answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”34 And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!35 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”
26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave1 nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.
Sons and Heirs
4:1 I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave,2 though he is the owner of everything, 2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. 3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles3 of the world. 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
Footnotes
[1]3:28For the contextual rendering of the Greek word doulos, see Preface [2]4:1For the contextual rendering of the Greek word doulos, see Preface; also verse 7 [3]4:3Or elemental spirits; also verse 9
31 And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. 32 And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers1 are outside, seeking you.” 33 And he answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”34 And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!35 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”
26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave1 nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.
Sons and Heirs
4:1 I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave,2 though he is the owner of everything, 2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. 3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles3 of the world. 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
Footnotes
[1]3:28For the contextual rendering of the Greek word doulos, see Preface [2]4:1For the contextual rendering of the Greek word doulos, see Preface; also verse 7 [3]4:3Or elemental spirits; also verse 9
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:
Good morning, everybody. If you will, please begin by turning in the gospel of Mark to chapter 3. And we'll be looking at this text this morning, but we'll also be turning to Galatians 3, so if you'll mark that spot. And it's also found in your worship guide if you have that with you. Just for those of you who do not know me, my name is Josh Howson.
Speaker 1:
I'm the associate pastor of administration here at Redeemer. I've been, in that position formally since January, but I've been me and my wife Laura have been in this church for 6 years now. And it's my joy to be up here in front of you. Usually, I do a lot of things behind the scenes, so I'm happy to be standing up here looking at the Word of God with you. So if you will, please turn to Mark chapter 3, and we're going to begin reading in verse 31 until the end of the chapter.
Speaker 1:
And hear these words because these are the words of God, they're the most important words that we will hear from all day long. It says this: And Jesus' mother and his brothers came, and standing outside, they sent to him, and they called him. And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, your mother and brothers are outside, and they are seeking you. And he answered them, who are my mother and brothers? And looking about at those who sat around him, he said this, here are my mother and brothers.
Speaker 1:
For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother. Pray with me. Heavenly father, we come before you today seeking you, and seeking to hear from your word. We ask that you will open our hearts to the gospel, and that your word will encourage, and it will also convict us. We pray that as we learn more about how to live as the family of God, that you will give us new hearts to love and care for each other as a family.
Speaker 1:
I pray, Lord, that you will speak to us today, and that your name will be lifted high. Let us be guided by your Holy Spirit as we turn to your word today. In Jesus' name, Amen. Well, so from the beginning, I want to begin by asking a question that we'll come back to multiple times throughout the sermon. The question for you to think about today is what is the foundation of Christian community?
Speaker 1:
What do you think is essential to make up Christian community? The way we answer that is really important here, at Redeemer, because fellowship and time in the body is something that we hold up really high under the gospel. But not only that, it's something that the church universal, it's it's been a part, ever since Jesus, hasn't it? And so the way that we answer the question, what is foundational, matters. And if you're anything like me, and you might be, I tend to have answered this question one of 2 ways.
Speaker 1:
The first way I answer what is foundational for Christian I say this. I talk about what we do as a body of believers. And what we do, it can look different in different churches, but gathering on Sundays, like we're doing right now, is a big part of what we do as Christian community. We gather under the Word and the teaching. We gather to sing songs of praise together.
Speaker 1:
We participate in sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper like we will today. And we also do things together. We we confess our sins and repent together. We fellowship with one another and we bear each other's burdens. And frequently, we even take the what we do another level, and we talk about how well we do those things.
Speaker 1:
I don't know if you're like me, but when I compare churches or different communities, it's how well do we do this, how well does this church do this. So that's the first way I tend to ask what's foundational for Christian community, but I also answer it in the what I receive from the church. Can look different ways for different people, but I like to think about this as I receive instruction and teaching in the word of God. Not only that, from from the people around me, I receive love and support. I receive accountability and encouragement, and we even receive some practical things, don't we?
Speaker 1:
Like how to raise our children in the Lord and how to, lead our families. Now all of these are really good things. These are good things. But I wanna argue today that these are actually the outcomes, the byproducts, what flows out of Christian community rather than what's at its foundation. They don't get down to the core because we look at scripture today, we're going to see that the foundation of Christian community is actually a lot less about us and what we do and what we receive, and it's a lot more about who we are as a result of the gospel.
Speaker 1:
And as good as these things, these Christian essentials, the things I just listed might be, there's a problem. And the problem is is when we focus on those too much, we tend to focus on the church about who we are and what we do a lot more than we focus on the cross and what Christ has done for us. We don't focus on who we've been made to be. And there's another problem that comes from focusing on the what we do, isn't there? And the problem is is that what happens when the church changes?
Speaker 1:
What happens if you founded who you are as a church on what you do and those things change? What happens if you change? What you're looking for out of a church might change, over time, and where are you left with Christian community at that point? Finally, what if something big happens in a church? What if a pastor leaves or a style changes?
Speaker 1:
These can be catastrophic, can't they? We're left discontent at that point because the thing we'd founded our community on has changed. And this might be kind of personal for a few of you here in the pews today. If you've been a Redeemer for 6 or 7 years, it looks pretty different than it used to look, doesn't it? You used to look around and there were a 100 people, we weren't even in this building, and you knew then by name, you could care for them well, you loved them, and it was a little bit easier to do the Christian community thing at that point.
Speaker 1:
Well, obviously, the things we hold at our core haven't changed, but redeemer's grown and it's gotten harder to do some of those things. I would say that if if the foundation of your community at that point was on the things that we did and the way we did them, you might be sitting here a little discontent right now. There's a flip side of the coin. Many of you are new. I look around and I don't know all of your faces, and the Lord has used a 1,000,000 different things to bring you to this church.
Speaker 1:
The characteristics I just mentioned might be some of the good ways God brought you here, but I wanna warn you is that if you founded your decision to come to this church on what this church looks like, you might be setting yourself up for failure. Because what if it changes? What if things look differently at some point? This goes back to something that if you've been at the church for any amount of time, you've heard Joel say before, and if you haven't, you will hear him say it, is that he likes to say, none of us are going to get the church that we want. He says that because he says that God is building this church.
Speaker 1:
He's actually building a church that he wants and it might look different than the one you want. He goes a step further to talk about he is the church planter. He's the pastor. You would think if anyone could get the church they want, it would be him, And he has trouble because he doesn't get the church he wants either. He doesn't get the church he wants because if he were to get the church he wanted, many of you would not fit in here.
Speaker 1:
This is a diverse group of people, and it needs to look diverse. So my goal today is that we will turn away from looking at Christian community based on the what we do and the what we receive, and that we will turn towards the gospel. That the gospel will be our foundation for Christian community, that Christ's life, death, resurrection, the forgiveness of sins that we receive will be the foundation of who we are as a people, and we will be much more than just a common interest group that happens to also love the Lord, but that we will be a family. A family. The church is a family.
Speaker 1:
And this will have significant ramifications on the way we live our lives. It will have significant ramifications on the way we view the people around us, and it'll have significant ramifications for the way that we view the church. So if you will now, let's look at the text that we read earlier. In Mark chapter 3, it's an it's an interesting setting. If you look at it, Jesus is in a house teaching.
Speaker 1:
We know that because when Jesus's mother and brothers show up, they show up outside and they can't get in. So who are these people in this house? Well, over recent time, Jesus has been teaching, he's been doing miracles, he's been casting out demons, and he's gained a following. Some of the people in the room might be the disciples, the people that he knew intimately and cared for, but there's others who in recent days had heard something he had said or seen something he had done and they believed, and they came to follow him. Needless to say, this was a random group of people, but they had one thing in common, and that was Christ.
Speaker 1:
And the room was so full that no one could get inside, and this isn't new either, because earlier in the book of Mark in chapter 3, we see that Jesus is teaching and he has such a big following that he can't even eat. He's surrounded by people, and this is why his family is actually concerned. They're concerned for his safety. They come to try to help him. They're worried that he is going to be in danger.
Speaker 1:
And so they're there. And what do they do? What does Jesus' family do? Well, they do what any family would do they cause a scene. They cause so much of a scene that the people inside go, Jesus, your family is outside.
Speaker 1:
They draw their attention to it because they might be screaming, they might be hollering, but they're doing whatever it takes to get Jesus's attention. Can you picture this scene? Can you picture what that would have been like? Can you imagine if that was happening in this room today? That's that's the way I was picturing, is that what if every seat was filled, there's no room at capacity, no one else could get inside, and my mom or my dad or my brother was outside knocking and trying to get my attention?
Speaker 1:
I can tell you what I would have done in that scenario. I would have said, hey, everybody, move over. Let's make room for my family. My family is outside. My my family that matters so much to me, they're outside.
Speaker 1:
We can make some room, can't we? I probably would have looked at people I know on the front row and say, Make room on the front row because they're really important to me. That's how I would have responded. And beyond that, can you imagine if you're a parent in the room? Can you imagine being married?
Speaker 1:
You're concerned about your child, you're concerned about their safety, and you come to care for him. What would you expect your son to do in that scenario? But this is where the tension in this text comes. Jesus doesn't handle the situation the way that we might have, And this is where Jesus does something very provocative. He actually uses this setting to redefine family.
Speaker 1:
In fact, Jesus pretty much does the opposite of what I just said. Instead of welcoming his family into the room, if you look at verse 33, this is what Jesus says. He says, who are my mothers and brothers? He asked that question, who are they? And if you've read this text in the past, like I have, I like to picture it typically as like a parable of Jesus.
Speaker 1:
He's sitting up on the mountaintop, there's a few disciples around him. But that's not the setting we've actually just seen, is it? Jesus's family is outside of the house. I mean they might be near a window. They can hear what Jesus has to say.
Speaker 1:
This is incredibly personal to Jesus, and it's incredibly personal to Jesus's family. But at this point, I'm sure, everyone in the room, everyone who's there listening to him or heard his teachings, they say, I know the answer to this one, Jesus. He says, who are my mothers and brothers? Well, they're the people outside screaming your name. That's the easiest question you've asked all day.
Speaker 1:
Not only is it the easiest question you've asked all day, but the answer is Mary, the virgin Mary. She's standing outside. We know the answer to this one. But Jesus doesn't say that Mary and his biological family are his mothers and brothers. He answers in an unexpected way.
Speaker 1:
Instead, he looks at this diverse group of people, some who had just started following him, and he says this in verses 34 and 35. He says, here are my mothers and brothers inside, For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother. And now this would have been very hard for the people in the room to even understand. This is a mind altering statement. Think about how the Bible holds up genealogies and and family inheritance and passing down rights.
Speaker 1:
The family mattered a lot, and Jesus is saying something that goes against that. And just like that was hard in the 1st century, this might be hard for a few of you to hear. You have a wonderful family. It's hard to hear this paradigm shift that Jesus is presenting. And Jesus knew that that would be the case.
Speaker 1:
He doesn't just stop and say, this one room full of people, that these are my family, he actually qualifies it, and he says, the ones who do the will of God, Those are my family members. It goes beyond genetics. It's it's the ones who do the will of God. This is a radical idea, isn't it? That the foundation of family is doing the will of God.
Speaker 1:
So Jesus has said has said three things. It's pretty easy to summarize this text. He says that there is a family relationship that goes beyond genetics and blood. He doesn't stop there. He goes and he says, the people in this room with me, they're my family.
Speaker 1:
And then he goes on in 3rd, and he says, it's based on doing the will of God. But that leaves a question, doesn't it? The question is, what does it mean to do the will of God? And I think we we look at that term, will of God, the phrase, and and a lot of times, we picture it as this nebulous idea of doing the will of God is this big plan God has for me. Who am I gonna marry, and what job do I need?
Speaker 1:
I don't think that's what Jesus is talking about here. I also don't think Jesus is talking about the do's and don'ts of the Christian life, though those are important. And the reason I don't think he's talking about that is because some of these people had just started following him yesterday. They just started following him. They didn't know what this looked like, and Jesus was even in the process of defining what the Christian life was to look like.
Speaker 1:
So if it's not based on that, what is it? It's not on these things we do. It's not on these things we receive. The foundation is the gospel. And I think we can look back at chapter 1 of Mark and see that not only is it the gospel, but it's our response to the gospel.
Speaker 1:
Doing the will of God is actually faith and repentance, and we see this in Mark chapter 1. If you have a Bible, you can kind of flip back a page. In Mark chapter 1 verses 14 and 15, we read these words that come at the very beginning of Jesus' gospel ministry. It says this in 14, now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand. Therefore, repent and believe the gospel.
Speaker 1:
See Jesus is calling for people to repent and believe. And this is the call on every person for all of history, isn't it? It was the call back then, and that's the call for us right now. Repent and believe the gospel. And through this, we become children of God.
Speaker 1:
As Jesus just pointed out, not only do we become children of God, but we become part of a family. So we've seen that faith and repentance is the way that we do the will of God, and doing the will of God actually has effect, and that is making us part of the family of God. Have you ever thought about that? Is that how you view the church? Do you view it as a family?
Speaker 1:
Because an important paradigm shift has just taken place in this passage. Jesus is saying you can't look at the church the way that you look at all other communities in your life. It's not just one of many priorities that you get to pick every once in a while. Jesus teaches that the church is unique. It's a group of people with one thing in common, and that's faith in the gospel, the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and that changes everything.
Speaker 1:
Therefore, in the setting in Mark 3, Jesus can look at this kind of hodgepodge group of people in front of him and say, this is my family. And the same thing is true in this room today. We're a family. We're more than just a common interest group that happens to love the Lord. We're actually a family, you and I.
Speaker 1:
But we're kind of we've seen what Jesus has to say in this text, but this is where I want us to turn to Galatians 3 because Paul, in his typical fashion, he likes to take an idea that you've heard before and give you all of the theology behind it. And not only does he give you the theology, but he then talks likes to talk about how that fleshes itself out in the church. And that, I think, will do service if we look at Galatians 3 today. I'm gonna begin reading in verse 26 if you want to follow along with me. It says this, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.
Speaker 1:
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ, you have put on Christ. There's neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, there's no male or female. For you are all 1 in Christ Jesus, and if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. Did you hear what Paul said in verse 26, that first verse I read? He says that we are all sons of God through faith in Christ.
Speaker 1:
And if you were to look further into chapter 4 verses 4 through 5, he says this. He says, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. That sounds a lot like what Jesus has just said about family, doesn't it? This adoption language. But not only that, Paul in his typical fashion, he takes it one step further, and he talks about how social constructs have been taken down because of the gospel.
Speaker 1:
He says that there's no longer Jew or Greek. There's no longer male or female. There's no longer slave or free. And as we look around, we know that that's not actually the case. The Jews and Greeks still existed.
Speaker 1:
Male and female still exist today, don't they? But what he is saying is that those things are secondary. Let's get the perspective right. They're secondary to who we are in the family of God. This is why Jesus could look at Jews and Greeks right next to each other and see all their cultural distinctions, but actually say, those don't exist anymore.
Speaker 1:
It's because they were brothers and sisters. And not only that, Paul can talk about marriage and singleness, and he doesn't hold one up above the other. He says, you can be married for the Lord, you can be single for the Lord, but just love each other mutually in that. You can even look at a married couple and say, y'all are brothers and sisters in Christ. Because what Paul and Jesus are saying is that through faith, we have been grafted into Christ.
Speaker 1:
We've been grafted into Christ and that has a a reality, a reality with our standing with God, but we've also been grafted into something else. We've been grafted into the family of God. And if we can picture this today, it really will change everything. One of the ways I I like to picture Paul's words that helps me kinda summarize this text is he talks about a vertical and a horizontal reality of salvation. And in our our society, I think we get the vertical piece right all the time.
Speaker 1:
When we go and evangelize, we talk about personal salvation with God. We talk about how faith and repentance leads to right standing because of what Christ did on the cross for us. It's this me and God mentality. But Paul realized that it doesn't stop there. The place that we tend to stop, he takes it to a horizontal reality.
Speaker 1:
Not only have you been made right with God, but you've been made right with all the people around you. That relationship that's been broken since the fall has now been restored because of the cross. So just as our new identity in Christ is going to last for all of eternity, praise be to God, Our new family is going to last for all of eternity. The problem is in our Western culture, we were taught to think as individuals. Aren't we?
Speaker 1:
I mean, the way media talks to us and the way we're taught to pursue our own happiness. The way we view the world is is is individualistic, and we can really see how that plays itself out when we ask the big questions in our lives. We ask questions like, what can my job do for me? You're going to pursue a job that's good for you and your family. But we take it a step further, and we go, what can my my family do for me?
Speaker 1:
Not even that. What can my social status do for me? And that plays into how we live out our lives. But I would say that a lot of times that mode of thinking leads to a 4th question, which is what can my church do for me? And that's really problematic in Christian community.
Speaker 1:
And my question is is that how you think about the church, as something that gives you something? And that's why I posed the question that I did at the beginning of the sermon. It's that we can dangerously run the risk of looking at church community as a focus on self, curved in on ourselves, but what we're called to do is focus on God and the community he's created. It's through repentance and faith that we become a part of this family. It's not based on the what we do or the what we receive, it's based on Christ and the cross.
Speaker 1:
And my hope today is that we will allow Jesus and Paul's paradigm shift to change the way that we view the people around us, and ultimately, the way that we view the church. And I wanna make it personal. Look at the people around you. Do you view them as your family? Do you view the person sitting next to you as a family member?
Speaker 1:
That might be easy because you might actually be sitting next to a family member. Right? And so let's let's make this harder. Do you view the person in the back row or the person in the balcony or the person you've never seen before, but who's in this church with one thing in common, faith in Christ, as your family member? Do you believe that?
Speaker 1:
I want you to really think about that this week. And if we do believe that, it will change everything. It will change the way we spend our time, won't it? It'll change the way we spend our money and our resources. It'll change the way we make decisions because we will think about the family we've been engrafted into when we make those decisions.
Speaker 1:
There's no longer room for the individualistic mode of thinking. And when I think about this, I like to think about the book of acts. I I don't know if many of you have read through that recently, but in early on in the book of Acts, we see the church community living out what God has created. We see people living together mutually. They're sharing their resources.
Speaker 1:
They're caring for each other. There was no orphan or widows among them. And if you're cynical like me, you've probably said, that's a pipe dream today. That's not reality. That's not something we can attain to do.
Speaker 1:
That was then, this is now. But as I've been thinking about the church's family, those things become a lot more practical, don't they? The way people lived mutually together as a family. So maybe we are called to look a lot like the church in acts. Now, I don't have enough time today to talk to you about all the ways that this fleshes itself out.
Speaker 1:
There's a 1000000 different ways that this changes the way that we view and do church, but I do want to look at Paul for just a minute in the way that this fleshed itself out in his letters. If you've read Paul's letters, and I've done that quite a bit recently as I was preparing for this, I used to read Paul's letters as a list of theological treaties on why we do and don't do things in the Christian faith. We turn it into Paul gives good list of how to live and how not to live, and though those things do exist, I've been able to read his letters recently as letters to family members. How often does Paul actually use the word brother, and we gloss over it just to think comrade or friend? No.
Speaker 1:
He actually believes that these are brothers and sisters, and when we see that, it changes the way that we read Paul. Because when he makes a list of things that aren't acceptable in the church, he says there's no room for sexual immorality. There's no room for greed, there's no room for fighting, there's no room for lawsuits, there's no room for selfishness. He says this because these are basic family expectations. You wouldn't do that among your family members, so why would you do that within the body of Christ?
Speaker 1:
And he also does this because he knows that the church is called to proclaim the excellencies of Christ to the world around them, And one of the primary ways we do that is living as unified group of people under one thing, the gospel. Because when the world looks at us and knows who we are, knows all of our filth and mess, but knows that Christ has brought us together in the way that you're living represents that, God will be glorified. And this means not acting like the world. And one specific example that we can kind of close out looking at is the is the the Paul's letter in 1st Corinthians in chapter 11. He talks about the way that they went to the Lord's supper.
Speaker 1:
It's really timely for us today. And we look at that in the beginning of that chapter, he talks about the fact that they are coming to the table not for better but for worse. And the reason was, in this scenario, what was happening is the rich were going before the poor. They're going to the table before the poor, and not only that, they were eating all the food, they were drinking the wine, they're getting drunk, and and the poor were not able to participate in the Lord's Supper. Now this is important because Paul's not writing necessarily to critique the mode or method of the way they're doing the Lord's Supper.
Speaker 1:
He's critiquing the fact that they're not doing it as a family. He knows that the table should be the primary place that these people are unified. They're coming together to think about and praise the Lord for his body broken for them, his blood shed for them that brings them together as a family. You see, Paul understood that there was a vertical component to salvation and a horizontal component, and that should play itself out in the Lord's supper. I want you to think about that as you come to the table in just a few minutes.
Speaker 1:
As you come to the table, think about the fact that this is about you and your right standing with God, your faith and repentance, but it's just as much about the family that God has created. So keep your head up. Look at the people who are coming to the table, and praise the Lord that this is your family. These are people that we love and care for. And I I really encourage you to do that today as we we come forward.
Speaker 1:
And so as we as we finish, I really think we need to go back to the question that I started with. I started with the question, what is the foundation of Christian community? And I think as we've we've looked at Jesus and Paul, we've realized that we can actually change that phrase Christian community to say, what is the foundation of the family of God? And if you leave with one thing, I hope that you can answer that with the foundation is the gospel. It's mutual faith and repentance.
Speaker 1:
It's looking to the cross, and it's Christ making us a family. It's not what we do. It's about what Christ has done for us. But there's a problem if we're honest with ourselves. It's that that's not how we are taught to think.
Speaker 1:
That's not what's in our hearts. We're taught to think as individuals. We're taught to look at the church as one of many competing things in your life that sometimes gets priority and sometimes gets put on the back burner. I think this text says that it can't be that way. Those other things are secondary.
Speaker 1:
So my hope my hope is that we will look at this text throughout the week, and we will grow in our ability to look at the church the way Jesus looked at it. He sees them as a family, and we need to look at each other as family members. So let us take this as a charge. Let's take this as a charge to do the things of loving each other well, to care for each other, to be unified, and to not be unified purely on the things we do, but to be unified in the things we believe, the message of the gospel be unified underneath the cross. So let us live as a family today.
Speaker 1:
Pray with me. Father, we thank you so much for sending your son, Jesus. We thank you that he died the death that we deserve, and that he paid the price we couldn't pay. Thank you for redeeming us. Thank you for redeeming us through your son, and thank you for adopting us as sons and daughters into your family.
Speaker 1:
We hold up the cross as we turn to you in faith and repentance today. We also pray that you will allow the truth of your word to penetrate our hearts, that you will break us of our individualistic tendencies, that you will give us new eyes to see those around us as brothers and sisters. And we especially pray right now as we approach the family table that you will be exalted as we rejoice in the message of the gospel, and as we remember your body that was broken for us, and your blood that was shed to redeem us, but also to make us into a family. May your name be lifted high as we praise you today. In Jesus name, amen.