Family Blessings Pt. 3 :: He Adopted Us

A study through the spiritual blessings in Christ from Ephesians 1:1-14.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Thanks for joining us today as you listen to a portion of the message recorded at Fine Life Church in Boulder, Colorado. If you'd like to connect with us further, you can visit us online at www.finelife.com.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

A different orientation. You guys have been trying to figure out what's happening for the last 45 minutes, 50 minutes in this room. And uh there's a like Bob said, there's a few different reasons why we changed the orientation of the room. The first primary reason is that we thought it'd be funny if it was like the whole service was a staring contest as the person on the opposite side of the room for you. So get some awkward looks, right? You can see who's actually putting money in the bucket, right? Then we can we can secretly judge each other from across the room. No, just joking, just joking. That's where you see you whisper to the person on the other side of the room, like I give online, right? Um but there's this great, there's this word in the scripture when it talks about this gathering in the New Testament. There's a couple different words to talk about the fellowship, the gathering, the coming together of the saints. And there's the word ecclesia, there's another word koinanea, and this word koinanea is a special word because it actually means joint participation in Christ. So coming together, it's more than I'm showing up to see somebody talk and to hear some good music and to get a few things that I need for this morning to launch me off in the week. Actually, the bigger blessing of this morning is what we share together. It's a shared experience in Christ. That we come together and we get to share something in Christ. And so if you don't, you're having a hard time getting oriented uh this morning, you can you can call our customer service hotline. Bob, what's your number? What's your cell phone? Exactly. Betty Betty is our customer service hotline. Yeah. She will uh she would be happy to not listen to you when I'm just joking. No, uh so so there's something about coming together realizing that the the God's call for us as the family, we've been in this series called Family Blessings, is to be reminded of what's shared in Christ, right? There's a joint participation in the person of Christ. And I like that even in the last 52 minutes or so, all of us have been asking a certain question, and it probably a different way, maybe consciously or unconsciously, and that question is, what is my center right now? Where am I supposed to be looking? Which way am I supposed to be facing? Am I facing the band? Do I face the words? But my chair is facing this way. And it's a really interesting question to come into the house of God and be confronted with a question that you don't normally even ask, which is right now in this moment, what is my center? What is the center of my focus? And what a beautiful question for us in the body of Christ. That we would come into the house of God asking, God, what is my center this morning? And come on, may every day we wake up with the question of what is the center of my life today? Jesus, are you at the center? Is my focus, the posture of my heart, focused on you this morning? What's beautiful is a little bit later on in the service, we are going to receive the communion elements in the center of the room, in the center of our experience. And yeah, we're gonna flush this out over the next several weeks and see how it feels. It's part of a huge experiment, right? You signed that, you signed your waiver coming in this morning, right? So but but we get to be reminded that Jesus is the center. And that's what I love, that we've been in this series called Family Blessings, and it's coming out of this passage in Ephesians chapter 1, whereas Paul is writing to the Ephesian church to establish them in the faith, to remind them of what's true. He, before he tells them what they should be doing and how they should be walking and how they ought to be behaving, which he gets to, he gets to later on, he starts off reminding them of their center. This is your center. And these are there's a few things you need to know before you even try to live the Christian life. How many even know it's actually impossible to live the Christian life? Jesus had to do it because we couldn't do it. And so then he gave us his Holy Spirit to empower us to do what's impossible. So that means your very life is supernatural because you've been filled with the Holy Spirit of God to live as Christ lived and walk as he walked. Come on. And so Paul is writing to the Ephesian church. And so if you have your Bibles, you can turn here. And uh, or you can read this on the screen. I want to read this from a couple different translations today. And we're just gonna read through the first, the first part. We start in verse 3, Ephesians chapter 1. He says, Blessed be the God of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will. To the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us and the beloved. Come on, somebody say amen this morning. I'm gonna read this from the Passion Translation. I love how there's there's some renderings of scripture, there's some uh paraphrases and translations that just like this morning, they they they they shifted just enough to help us see something in a new light that we didn't see before. And so this is the Passion Translation. I'll just read this, you pay attention. May God Himself, the Heavenly Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, release grace over you and impart total well-being into your lives. Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm has already been lavished upon us as a loved gift, a love gift from our wonderful heavenly Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus, all because he sees us wrapped up into Christ. This is why we celebrate him with all our hearts. And he chose us to be his very own, joining us to himself, even before he laid the foundation of the universe. Because of his great love, he ordained us so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with an unstained innocence. For it was always in his perfect plan to adopt us as his delightful children through our union with Jesus, the anointed one. So that his tremendous love that cascades over us would glorify his grace. For the same love that he has for his beloved one Jesus, he has for us. And this unfolding plan brings him great pleasure.

unknown 7:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Jesus, this morning, we thank you. We receive this gift, God, of your identity. And we thank you that this unfolding plan, being wrapped up into Christ with your cascading love flowing from top to bottom, from heaven to earth, God, we thank you that this is all bringing you great pleasure. This morning, God, let us feel your pleasure over us and our very bones, God. Let it course through our veins the pleasure and delight of the Father. We thank you, Father, for your family, for the joining together of heaven and earth. We bless you today. Amen. Amen. About twelve years ago, my wife and I were in uh we went to Kigali, Rwanda for a missions trip that was sent out from Vine Life. And uh it was an awesome trip. There's a team of us from Vine Life that went and we did all kinds of ministry. One of the young men that we met there, his name was Martin. And uh he's part of a comfort my people team. Some of you guys are remember Willie Ruminera and the whole team in Rwanda. And uh and it's a great team. But while we were there, we did a lot of things while we were there. We did a lot of important ministry, right? Because when you go overseas, every everything is awesome. You have all these opportunities to minister and to be with people and to pray with people and to preach sermons and do worship, the whole thing. But one of the more important ministry moments actually happened in an unsuspecting moment. This guy, Martin, the entire time, he was fascinating. This is like when digital cameras were still a thing, like before iPhones replaced digital cameras, I think, right? Um and so digital, digital camera, if you it's okay if you still use a digital camera, I'm just saying this is back like when they were like, you know, they were really ramping up, and we had brought a digital camera with us and uh um taking pictures the entire trip, and this guy Martin was just fascinated with our camera the entire time. And he was just he's asking to borrow, he's asking to try it out. So at the end of the trip, my wife had the brilliant idea. She said, We should let's we should just give him the camera. Let's just give him the camera, let's gift him with our camera. And so we did at the end of the trip. And he was floored, he was blown smooth out by this gift of a digital camera, because now he could he could document all of their, you know, all the ministry stuff his whole life. Um he soon after got a Facebook account, the whole deal. And uh and so we were able to keep track of everything you're doing now through this digital camera that we'd given him previously. And uh what was amazing though was um beyond just a thank you, if somebody had given you a digital camera, you'd probably say thank you. Uh you probably would be ecstatic. I mean, you probably would be overflowing with joy if that had been you. Um but he took it one step further. Within basically a week or two, he actually changed his last name to our last name. So I kid you not. You go on Facebook right now, you can still look this up. I'm talking 12 years later. Martin Humbrecht Bigigiza. Martin Humbrecht Bigigiza. I'm talking to Kikali Rwanda, Martin Humbrecht Big Giza. Now, I don't know exactly how this works, because he just got married in the last couple years. I don't know if he made his wife take our name as well. That would be awesome, but you know, no pressure, Martin. Um but it was just that it was it was an amazing thing watching this thing unfold that the the act of generosity touched a certain place in his life so deep that he actually wanted to affiliate with us in our family name. He took our name into his very identity. And and and probably, you know, that was the only time we had been there, and that's the only time I think we've actually spent time with him, was 12 years ago. But he's still carrying our name with him all across Rwanda because he was moved by something. He was moved by an act of generosity, he was moved by love. And so what's amazing is when we start looking at this passage, and we see that through the work of the Father to send his son Jesus, through something so great that he accomplished, not only did he choose us, but then he then adopted us. And so a couple weeks ago we talked about what it's like to be chosen by the Father and to live in the preference of the Father. How many of you know that you are preferred by the Father? You are his preference. It's something meant to be experienced to just let it just simmer. You're meant to start every day basking in the preference of God. He didn't, he didn't just, it wasn't just a toleration of, I guess we'll take you, dents and bruises and all. Yeah, we got dents and bruises, but you are his preference. And he's been we've been made perfect, we've been made holy and blameless, the scripture would tell us. But it goes beyond his preference. Not only were his preference, but it would go beyond that to mean he would adopt us into his family, which is a word we covered this a little bit ago. I was sharing a story a couple weeks ago about some of the elements of adopting our second son Asher, which is amazing. But this is something that we get invited to as well. We get adopted into the family of God. Now, what does that mean? The question that we are then to ask, if we know that we're adopted as the family of God, then a good question to ask is what kind of family are we actually adopted into? So you guys know that adoption is more than just a transaction. It's more than just a label I'm adopted. Adoption has everything to do with what kind of family we are adopted into. Now, all of us, as we've talked before, all of us grew up in a certain kind of family, or maybe a non-family for some of us. You grew up with certain kinds of parents, or maybe non-parents. There's realities you grew up with, both cultural, even ethnically, but certainly within your family, there were dynamics that you didn't choose. You were born into them, right? They were they were a reality before you ever got here, and then you were parented into a new reality, right? Now, that can be, you know, we could probably identify some bad ways that's gone, but I want to take a moment just to reflect this morning. Just think about, take a moment to reflect. Thinking about your family of origin, what you were born into. Maybe it wasn't your actual biological parents, it could have been some other caregivers or guardians. But think about like what's one positive thing that you received from your family that was different than other families? What's one positive thing that you would say about your family? Now, in a second, we're actually gonna break up, and I I want you to talk to somebody around you. We're gonna get up into groups of two or three here just in a second, and you're gonna share something positive that you received from your parents or your grandparents or your family of origin that you feel like is true of you and your identity now because of that. And I'll share with you an example as you're thinking. Um it was awesome being born into a family of musicians, worship leaders, creatives, artists, and then even knowing that my two grandparents, uh my my two grandfathers, which I didn't know very well, they they one of them died before I was born, the other one died uh when I was very very early on. But at least a couple of things I know about two of my grandfathers on both sides. One was an architect, another one was an inventor, engineer type, and they both had the ability to see things before they existed, and to like actually have a vision and imagine something before it existed, and then put the plans together to bring it into place. And then I felt like that funnel, the creative heart to funnel through my parents and the artistic musician side of things, and I got some kind of an interesting mashup of creativity and goodness and kind of swirl and worshipper's heart all mixed in to each other. And it's something I felt like I received, it was a gift I got from my family of origin. Now, for you, it might be something different. It could be uh it could just be amazing work ethic, it could be generosity, it could just be the love lavished on you by the way they loved you or the people around you. Um but let's take a moment here. We're gonna actually, again, break up into groups of two or three. We're gonna just take a few minutes. Okay? Introduce yourself to somebody around you. I know this is gonna be this is breaking all the social norms this morning, but we're gonna do it anyways. Because the person around you is awesome. That's why. So find somebody around you, either groups of two or three. Talk about one thing that you receives from your family of origin that you feel blessed by today. We'll come back in a second. All right, come back in. Did you guys learn something new? About the person you're around? Hopefully you guys met some uh exchanged some names and met some new friends this morning. Thanks for going with the flow. So, as you can see, I'm guessing, uh, depending on what was shared with you, there's a lot that could be said about our families of origin. And certainly there's ways that we are effective negatively. Hopefully, we're able to identify some things that we're grateful for. We were born into certain dynamics that are true of us, and this is why it's important for us to look at the family of God through the same lens, right? That part of walking with Jesus, being a disciple of Jesus is allowing God to parent us into a new reality. We're parented into a new family dynamic. So there's what we grew up with, and there's even redemptive things that showed us what God was like through our families of origin, but then there's a fuller expression that we walk into when we enter into fellowship with the Father and the Son and the Spirit, right? And so users are handing out this little grid. I just want to refer to this, and you guys can spend some time with this after. But this is part of what we get to celebrate. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that we've been included in something. That we did not initiate. We've included something in Christ, in God. And this particular grid, you'll see it on the screen, you have it the card here. This is part of our gospel identity. And so what's awesome is coming into the new family of Jesus, it doesn't just start with what are our best ideas for ourselves. How many of you are thankful for that you're not just your best ideas about yourself? That you we're starting into who God is, what's true of God, what has been accomplished in him, and then after that, then we can talk about what that means about us and how we ought to live. And so, just for a reference, so let's look at the father, who God is. God is a father. What has he done? He sent his son to adopt us into a family. Everybody say amen. Who we are, that means because he has done that, because he is a father and he sent his son to adopt us, that means that we are sons and daughters in the Father's family. And if we're sons and daughters in the Father's family, what does that mean we do? That means we get to love each other, love one another as a holy family under the authority of the Father. God is also a son, his name is Jesus. What has he done? He established his kingdom on earth as a servant king. Don't you love that? That Jesus came as a servant king. Serving us to the point of death. And what does that make us? If he is a servant king, that means we are servant heir subjects of the king. Princes and princes and princesses in the kingdom. We're younger siblings of the king. So what does that mean about how we then conduct ourselves? We believe that's true about us. That we are heirs of the servant king. That means that we get to serve the least among us and one another in the name of the king. That as we get adopted of the family of God, our great one of our greatest identities is the way that we're able to view each other through the lens of love and ultimate service. And it's the same is true about the Holy Spirit. The awesome, wild part of the Trinity. What has He done? He was sent to manifest the kingdom on earth and fill it with the presence of God. Amen. And so, who does that make us? We are now spirit-equipped and empowered ambassadors slash missionaries of the kingdom of God. That's who you are. You are spirit-equipped and empowered. You are a powerful ambassador and missionary of the kingdom of God. So, what does that mean we do? That means we get to proclaim and demonstrate the kingdom for all to see. Isn't that beautiful? So we're across the room because of who God is, he gets to decide what his family's like. We don't get to decide what the family of God is like. He decides what it's like, and then we get adopted into it. And so because of that, we are now in a family of empowered servants sent into the world to demonstrate the incoming kingdom of God. That's who we are. So point to somebody across the room and say, that's you. This is you. This is who we are, and this is exciting. This is exciting because we are not allowed to see each other any different than this. So you can look at the person, you can think about the people that you just talked with a second ago. People you're sitting next to you, the person that you you had, you know, you're maybe frustrated with on the other side of the room that you're not sitting next to them purposely this morning. Whatever. I'm just joking, I'm joking. We don't do those types of things, do we? Through the lens of what God has done, it is illegal for us to see them as anything else than a son or a daughter. Someone sent to love, somebody empowered also with the Holy Spirit and sent into the world. That means every single one of you, every single one of us is called by God and sent by God as ambassadors, missionaries, emissaries of the kingdom of God. Wherever we're placed, you are equally called. You don't have to wait for a gifting or a stage or a talent. All of us are called by God because that is what His He decided about us before the foundation of the world was laid. As we put our trust in Him, right? As we begin to receive this new identity in Christ, this is what becomes true of us. So adoption is a really interesting thing. First of all, is this okay? Is this good with everybody? You guys good? Okay. Good to know. Um adoption is a really interesting term that we that is kind of peppered through the New Testament, specifically five times. And so we see it in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, we see it his letter to the Galatians, but then we see it three times in the book of Romans. Three times. So and that's an interesting thing. Why would he mention that three times in Romans? Because adoption was a Roman idea. It wasn't even a Jewish idea. There wasn't even a thing for adoption in the Jewish context. If you had a relative that died, you just took their kids. It wasn't adoption, it was just that's what you did. Adoption was actually a Roman concept, it was a Roman idea. And what's wild about adoption in the time in Rome in the first century, that's different than ours, is adopted kids were actually had more rights and were more powerful, arguably, than the biological kids. Biological children in the first century actually could be disowned, you could, you could be disinherited from your family's thing. You could actually, like parents had they had uh a few different uh, there's a few different reasons why you would even want to disown your kids, but that was possible with a biological kid. But if you were adopted, if you were adopted into a family, you were never able to be disinherited, never able to be disowned. You had more rights. In fact, if you were adopted into the family, you would receive a toga? Yes. The ultimate sign of adoption. My toga! Yes! Embroidered, humbrecked, yes. You'd receive a ring, a signet, and you'd receive a new name that couldn't be taken from you. And you'd receive a new inheritance. And what's what what a lot of people don't know, when Paul's writing to the Romans, they knew exactly what adoption was. They knew exactly what he was talking about, not just because this was true. This is true not just for the civilians, this is true in the royalty. And a lot of people don't know this, but the first uh few hundred years of the Roman Empire, every single Roman emperor was adopted. So Caesar Augustus, brilliant photo of Caesar Augustus. That's how he'll be remembered for all of time, is this guy. He's adopted by an uncle you might know, Julius Caesar. So why would they do that? Because it was the best way to hand the kingdom off to a successor without any, if you had a big family and there was some turmoil within the family, uh, arguably, again, historians could fill in the color and the texture of these, you know, this illustration a little bit more, but uh, arguably it was it made for a more peaceful transition, succession of power, where the emperor would literally adopt a son, give him a new name, and then hand the kingdom over to his son. So when Paul is writing to the Romans and saying he has adopted us, Romans 8:15, the spirit you received does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again. Rather, the spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry Abba Father. So as Paul is penning these words, it's not just this cute idea of you didn't have a family, now you have a family, or now your family is a little bit better than your other family. There's a royal sense, there's a kingdom type of sense about this, that God is literally, the Father has pulled us into his family, given us a new name, and is handing us the keys to the kingdom and saying, now I want you to rule and reign as I have established my rule and reign in your heart. I am calling you, I'm giving you a new vocation, which is to extend everything that's true of my family out into the world that you inhabit. Come on. Is this is this exciting to anybody else? This lights me up. Because we read these words sometimes and they just feel just gentle. It's just gentle, oh, spirit of adoption, you know. Which is good. I mean, we should feel that. That's the delight and the pleasure of the Father, but it's not just gentle, it's authoritative. It's authoritative. There's an empowering that happens in the kingdom of God and the family of God. You were not adopted just to have a fragile existence. You're adopted to receive the power and the strength and the authority, not just for your own good, but like the Son Jesus showed us to serve and to lay down our lives every day, as much as we can, because that's what he showed us was the most important thing. So adoption, full rights as sons. And so the reason why this is a big deal, we have to talk about this in the family of God, is as soon as you walk out these doors, the world has a different view of identity. And it flies, arguably, there's there are few things more counter-cultural that happen within the Church of Jesus Christ than what happens, how we talk about identity. We live in a time where it is seen as foolish to receive any external identities or labels outside of what we decide for ourselves. It's seen as an offense. It's actually seen, it's it's it's borderline seen as unjust. It's considered an injustice that anybody else would give you an identity that you did not come up with on your own. And where do we see this? Everybody in our culture is searching for their inner child. And we all have an inner child, by the way. Like I believe that, but everybody is searching for this truest sense. I gotta go, can't I gotta get up in the mountains, I've been working so much, I gotta get up in the mountains, I gotta go connect with myself. Right? Any label regarding any anything, anything anymore, anything given to you, even as something as uh something as simple as sexuality or gender or any type of political affiliation or any type of religious association, anything is up for grabs anymore in our culture. Now there's a lot of questions that circle all those conversations, and and they should be had in conversation, but we have to understand this is the culture that we live in, is everyone is on a search for themselves, and and and I'm not going to receive anything you say about me, I will decide what's true about me. This is hyper-individualism, and this is the culture that's growing and growing and growing and growing. Here's the problem this pursuit of ourselves, we found, does not just not lead to more life. In fact, it leads to more bondage oftentimes because we don't always know ourselves that that well. We need someone to show us who we are. And so when we come into the kingdom of God, into the family of God, it's not just another continuation of I'm going to, now Jesus is going to help me become my truest self. It's I'm going to receive what you've already said is true about me. You've already, you've already said some things that are true about me. You designed me and created me in a certain way with a specific definition that's true about me that I get to receive gladly, not as slavery of now I have all these external labels I never asked for, but as freedom to know what it means to actually be living as a son or a daughter of the Most High God. So it is actually freedom to receive labels from the Father and the Son and the Spirit upon our lives. It actually leads to deeper joy and to deeper life and a more robust existence than just finding ourselves all day. Anyone here? Now, and you guys know what I'm talking about. I'm not saying don't self-reflect. You know, we have to grow in self-awareness. You have to know your own emotional state. You have to grow up in your own family of origin, just like we did a little bit ago. We have to understand where we came from. So it's not that we don't journey inside, it's the but it's the Spirit of God who searches all things, even the heart of God. The Spirit of God searches all things. And when we're connected with the Holy Spirit of God, we know a lot more about ourselves than we ever would apart from Him. Amen? So this is important as the family of God that we that we don't dismiss this as basic. It's basic, but it's potent. The adoption, a new inherited identity. It starts here as we're able to live these identities out into the world that God has positioned us in a specific time, specific place, specific neighborhoods. He sent us out as outposts in the kingdom. So living these identities are some of the most powerful things that we can do when we believe these things about ourselves. I am sent by the Holy Spirit, empowered and equipped. We're able to demonstrate something true about God as we live these things ourselves. And last note before we receive communion together as a sign of coming into the family of God. Another reason this is so important, we're in a time where we need more elders to rise up to demonstrate and model what these things look like. And I'm not talking about elders in the church like we, you know, elders here at Vinyland. I'm talking about elders in the kingdom of God. My generation and those younger than me are starving to see something, to see men and women live out with conviction and passion what it looks like to be loved into old age by the Father and the Son and the Spirit. This, I'm telling you, it's one of the biggest things that this generation we need. We need mothers and fathers and elders that can model peace and joy and freedom and righteousness in the Holy Spirit. Sent out. And so use it, just take this as an invitation for you across the room. There may be some ways you have felt diminished, there may be some ways you felt suppressed, there may be some ways you feel like I don't know how to do that, I don't know how to model anything, I don't even know what that means. I don't even think the younger generation wants it. Listen, it doesn't matter if they want it or not. Just do it. Right? So, what does this mean? Take somebody out for coffee just before the service. I was blown away. One of my favorite people on earth was here at Vine Light this morning, Judy Emmons. Judy Emmons, John Fitch's mother, right over here. You know what I loved? She was here early, probably because John dragged her here to play drums. She was here early, and she wasn't just hanging out by herself. She was finding all of the young people and the young children, and she was engaging them, and she was asking them questions about where they're experiencing God, and they're like, I don't know everything she was talking about, but I loved that she was engaging the young people from her heart. Not because anybody told her to, but because she's an elder. She's a woman of God. She's a mother that has that sees others as an opportunity to model and call them up into a new reality. So, what does that mean for us here today? I think all of us can respond to that, by the way. That's not just an age, it's not an age thing. Okay? I'm not saying you have to identify as old or young. That's not what I'm saying. It's a heart posture thing. Okay? And so this means that you have an opportunity to go get somebody's number. Go invite somebody out to coffee. Well, what if they don't want to? Who cares? That's not your problem if they don't want to, that's their problem. They're the fools. I'm serious. Your job is not to convince them to do anything, it's just to pour out your cup and say, I've given all I've got. You guys hearing me this morning? We have to do this. We have to do this. And not just in this room. This is the life that we are sent out to live, is to call each other up to a new standard as the family of God. Doesn't matter if you're rejected. It doesn't matter if nobody's interested. Who cares? God's interested. And yeah, you can learn in the process, you can stumble forward, you can fail, you can get rejected. Awesome. So did Jesus. He wasn't understood. He was rejected a couple times. So we get to, that's what we call the fellowship of the suffering. So this morning though, as we rejoice in the blessings that we receive, let's get quiet before the Father and the Son and the Spirit. Get up from your chair, come to the center, grab a cup, a piece of bread, bring him back to your chair. We're going to receive communion together this morning. It's a sign that we have been brought into the new family of Jesus.

SPEAKER_04 40:25

Amen. Okay, if you would want to stand and just come down the aisle, receive the elements, go back to your seat, and I'll uh I'll talk while you're doing that. You know, uh in our family, every Sunday afternoon, we all come together for a family meal. It's something that we devote ourselves to. And when you read Acts in the second chapter, starting in verse 42, it talks about the family of God as it was forming and how people came together and they broke bread together. This meal is a little bit different in the sense that in John, in the sixth chapter, we read about a debate and a teaching that Jesus is doing in a synagogue in Capernaum. And he's debating with the Jewish leadership about his identity as the bread of life. And during that debate, he makes the statement and he says, Unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, there's no life in you. Well, that thinned the crowd considerably because they didn't understand what he was saying. They were seeing something in the natural, not something in the spirit realm. What we do this morning is in the spirit realm. So we clear our hearts and our minds and we go before the Lord. On the night that he was betrayed, he took the bread and he blessed it, and he gave it to them. And he said, Take and eat, for this bread is my body given for you. Thank you, Lord, for your bread. Thank you for your body. Thank you that you bring life into us. In the same way, he took the cup and he blessed it and he gave it to them, and he said, Drink all of this. For this wine is the new promise in my blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. So thank you, Lord. Thank you for your blood. We receive your body, we receive your blood. Every time we do this, every time we devote ourselves to this most sacred moment, we proclaim the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because when he said he was the bread of life, he said, the bread your ancestors ate, they ate it and they died. This bread, you'll never die. Just like Luke said, We're joint heirs, princes and princesses in the family of God. So, Lord, thank you for this moment. Thank you that you nourish us in the spirit. Thank you that you refresh us and you energize us and you remind us of what you've done. Thank you that we can leave your table today rejoicing. We can go out into a world knowing who we are. We're adopted into the family of God. And all of this is in your name and to your glory, Jesus. Amen. Amen.