Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 1: Let us pray, father, I give you thanks this morning for your presence here and we thank you, lord, for this book, this letter from Peter.
Speaker 1: And we pray this morning, god, that you would give us fresh eyes to see this idea of salvation, and I pray that, as we explore it, god, you'd open us and expand our consciousness, our knowledge, our insight into this and what you're doing in the world.
Speaker 1: And I pray that you would give us a glimpse, even a deeper glimpse, of what you're up to.
Speaker 1: And I pray, god, you'd give us faith to see it.
Speaker 1: That by your spirit, you would empower us to have the eyes to see, and by faith, god, we would pitch in and join you in this mission.
Speaker 1: And, god, may we receive all the good and perfect gifts from you that come only from you, as gifts, god, that you would lavish upon us.
Speaker 1: I mean you enable us to let go of all the things that we want to hold on to.
Speaker 1: Instead of these gifts from you, may we indeed join you in this beautiful relationship with the divine.
Speaker 1: God.
Speaker 1: Give us the capacity to do that.
Speaker 1: You bless us this morning, god.
Speaker 1: Bring us clarity where we need it and peace where we lack it, and help us to have love for our neighbors in Jesus' name.
Speaker 1: Amen, amen.
Speaker 1: You can see it.
Speaker 1: Good morning everyone.
Speaker 1: My name is Ryan.
Speaker 1: A couple of quick housekeeping things this fall.
Speaker 1: We're not super-duper full right now, but this fall, and from fall until next spring, this is going to be a packed house.
Speaker 1: We're going to keep two gatherings.
Speaker 1: We might in the future, if needed, to throw in a third one, but we want to pack this place out, and so the fall will be when that happens.
Speaker 1: So I'd love to ask you even now We'll keep asking, but if you're a longtime, a tender member or whatever, I'd love for you to consider one of two things.
Speaker 1: One, start moving closer to the front, because in the fall, all of our guests if you're kind of just checking it out or want to, you know, maybe come in late.
Speaker 1: We want to leave the back open for them and just allow them, not trying to enable their late attendance, I just mean that we want to be gracious.
Speaker 1: It's tough when you walk in late anywhere, you're going to like parade through everybody and like, oh it's me, you know.
Speaker 1: So I'd love to invite you to be a missionary and kind of scoot forward not right now, but later on and scoot forward.
Speaker 1: And then also, if you're here like I don't really care, I like the 832 and the 10s, find their both good, maybe consider going to the 830 just for a season and making some room for this gathering.
Speaker 1: So if you would love to consider that, pray about those.
Speaker 1: I would love to ask that.
Speaker 1: And also, if you're a guest here, you have a kid and your kid wasn't signed up for a Pathfinder, as you can do that?
Speaker 1: Well, I guess not now, but you can just do that at any time and just contact the offices.
Speaker 1: And we also have childcare available back here If you've got a little one who gets a little too rowdy.
Speaker 1: We don't mind rowdy kids, but sometimes it can be distraction for you or whatever.
Speaker 1: So you can sneak out there and drop them off or just go run around a little bit and then bring them back.
Speaker 1: It's fine too.
Speaker 1: We love having kids around.
Speaker 1: So, all right, this morning we are in the end of our journey through First Peter.
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed it and this whole.
Speaker 1: My one regret is that I wish we could have taken a whole year to preach through First Peter, because there's so much in there.
Speaker 1: I mean, you heard Katie, my beautiful wife, read that passage this morning, it was like just incredibly long and dense and incredible.
Speaker 1: The whole book is that way.
Speaker 1: If you read the book along with me, it's pretty.
Speaker 1: It's got tons of dynamite like one liners and memorable verses.
Speaker 1: And so we went through thematically, so we did one theme at a time.
Speaker 1: So this is actually a verse from First Peter, but we're at the end of First Peter.
Speaker 1: So there you go.
Speaker 1: But week one was about being born again into a living hope.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Week two is about suffering.
Speaker 1: Peter just assumes that life is about suffering and is only not only.
Speaker 1: His best advice is to like sort of plant your suffering into the sufferings of Christ, like, hey, christ also suffers.
Speaker 1: You're in good company and know that there will come a time when you will experience, as Sonia mentioned with her father, like resurrection life and that's our hope as Christians.
Speaker 1: And then, last, we're talking about the holiness, or about holiness.
Speaker 1: So Peter calls the people to be holy, for God as holy.
Speaker 1: And what he means is not like be perfect or be I mean not per se or like be some morally upstanding, good person that's going to be difficult, you should try that but rather like be whole, be integrated, be, receive the healing you need from God as a gift from God, and live out and in and through that.
Speaker 1: Today I want to engage in salvation.
Speaker 1: This is a prominent theme in First Peter.
Speaker 1: It goes throughout the whole of well scripture.
Speaker 1: Really, it's very much throughout.
Speaker 1: The whole of scriptures is a common thread, but especially in First Peter, and he mentions it four times in First Peter, three times alone, as you heard.
Speaker 1: Katie probably read it in that first introduction.
Speaker 1: Remember Peter's writing to a bunch of exiles not literal exiles, I don't think, but people who are living in a culture.
Speaker 1: They're brand new Christians and they're Gentile Christians probably, and so they're living in this place that's sort of contrary to the way of the cross and so the way of Jesus they've adopted, their culture and their society around them is contrary to them.
Speaker 1: So you might not have that hard of a time imagining living in a culture that's sort of going the opposite direction from your vision of the cross.
Speaker 1: And so you're in good company and in our case, probably many of you, in this part of the world anyway, are not suffering from immense persecution as they were.
Speaker 1: They were suffering.
Speaker 1: Their lives were in danger, their daily, their economic systems were in danger.
Speaker 1: A lot of things were up in the air for them.
Speaker 1: We don't probably have that in this part of the world, but there are places in China or in the Middle East or in places around the globe where Christians really are in danger for professing Christ, and so thankfully, in our country we don't have that all the time, but you get the idea.
Speaker 1: There's a cultural movement that's sort of contrary to the way of the cross, and my encouragement to you is always to look like Jesus when you engage the culture.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't have to hide from it or sort of, you know, cow-toward the culture, but we want to be loving in our engagement of the culture.
Speaker 1: It's fine to disagree and push back do that great.
Speaker 1: But look like Jesus when you do that.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we're just as mean and nasty as everybody else, but we just slap Jesus' name on it and it's like that's not really what.
Speaker 1: So that was the last.
Speaker 1: So today I want to engage in again salvation.
Speaker 1: Now here's my thing I want to propose from the jump.
Speaker 1: I think, as many of us think of salvation, we might fall into one of two camps, and the first one is that this idea of salvation was a one-time event that happened to you in your life, probably prior to now.
Speaker 1: Or if you're here and you're not, you wouldn't call yourself saved.
Speaker 1: Maybe it'll happen later, but it's like a one-time deal, like if I said, hey, when were you saved?
Speaker 1: You might say, oh, when I was 14, I was at summer camp, and you know that might be how you view salvation.
Speaker 1: Fair enough.
Speaker 1: Another kind of, I think, rut on the other side of the road might be the idea of, oh well, salvation is yet to come.
Speaker 1: It's sort of this idea of heaven after I die, and for many of us it might be like you might envision, like a disembodied soul floating around in the ether, somewhere else other than here on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: Okay, so those are the two kind of like, I think, polarizing options in many ways, in many cases for many people, even non-Christians, like either it happened one time and that's that, but it does not happen when you die, or it's just heaven when you die and it's some disembodied spirit thing, that's sort of the end of time and space, and you're kind of floating around doing who knows.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to propose this morning a sort of additional or supplemental view of salvation.
Speaker 1: If you're with me and I got 25 minutes to do what somebody's doing.
Speaker 1: I'm doing my very best, but if you have any questions or want to talk or come and grab me.
Speaker 1: I'm always open for that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But here's the deal and here's how I think Peter addresses salvation.
Speaker 1: For sure he mentions it again four times.
Speaker 1: The word he uses is the word soteria.
Speaker 1: Everyone say soteria, soteria.
Speaker 1: It's just a Greek word that means salvation or to be saved, and Peter, I think, knows a thing or two about being saved.
Speaker 1: So Peter, of course, now he's an older, a more wise and well established Peter.
Speaker 1: He has a 401K, he's got a place on the lake, you know, he's got.
Speaker 1: He's kind of, he's lived his life and he's riding up to these exiles.
Speaker 1: But I imagine he's thinking back over his own life and the myriad times that he was saved.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite stories in the gospels is one night Jesus sends the disciples out into the lake to go across it and he leaves them and goes somewhere else and they go out there and they're out there on the lake when it says the storm rolled in and these waves begin to batter their small little boat and they're terrified.
Speaker 1: I mean, how could you not be, and in fact these were fishermen some of them.
Speaker 1: So like the fact that they're scared.
Speaker 1: If they're scared, I mean I would have been really scared.
Speaker 1: But they're out there and it's dark, it's the middle of the night, waves are bashing their boat and they're horrified, they're afraid, they're gonna die, like really they're thinking they're gonna die.
Speaker 1: Then it says early that morning, so I imagine Don just breaking or about to break, and it's like the darkest part of the day maybe, and they see Jesus come walking out on the water, which is crazy, towards them and they don't recognize him.
Speaker 1: In fact, who do they think he is?
Speaker 1: Or rather, what do they think he is?
Speaker 1: They think he's a ghost and they're terrified, which is awesome, because anytime in scripture and maybe in life, whenever there's an encounter with the divine, fear and terror and wonder often accompany him.
Speaker 1: So don't be surprised as you encounter the living God if it feels frightening or terrifying and you're full of wonder all at the same time.
Speaker 1: That's what happens when you encounter the divine.
Speaker 1: It sort of deconstructs your worldview and everything you thought was true is like, radically, it's unstable when you encounter the divine and strange, mysterious God.
Speaker 1: So there he is, and then Peter recognizes him.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's Jesus.
Speaker 1: He's like, if it's you, call me out on the water and I'm gonna come out there with you.
Speaker 1: And so, jesus, all right, come on out here.
Speaker 1: And Peter gets out of the boat and says, walking on the water, how many of you have ever walked on water?
Speaker 1: I didn't think so.
Speaker 1: And Peter does it.
Speaker 1: He goes out there.
Speaker 1: Now, of course, the winds pick up and the waves begin to sort of roll again.
Speaker 1: And what happens?
Speaker 1: Peter looks to the side and what happens?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he becomes afraid, unlike before, and he starts to sink.
Speaker 1: He cries out master, save me, master, save me.
Speaker 1: I would propose to you, I would ask you this morning, and feel free to yell out an answer what did Peter need saving from Drowning?
Speaker 1: Yes, he was gonna die, he was drowning.
Speaker 1: He needed to be saved.
Speaker 1: What else might Peter have needed to be saved from?
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's unbelief, his doubt.
Speaker 1: No doubt, no pun intended, without a doubt, he needed to be saved from his lack of faith.
Speaker 1: What else?
Speaker 1: Fear?
Speaker 1: He was terrified.
Speaker 1: What are the things that you need saving from this morning?
Speaker 1: Now, peter, hang on.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, hang on, sarah.
Speaker 1: We're not there yet.
Speaker 1: We'll get there in a minute.
Speaker 1: Imagine Peter's life before this moment and imagine Peter's life after this moment.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 1: Jesus saves Peter.
Speaker 1: Okay, now you can go ahead, and, sarah, they've already seen it, so we're gonna.
Speaker 1: He saves him.
Speaker 1: He saves him in every way.
Speaker 1: Peter cries out to Jesus master, save me, because Jesus isn't sinking.
Speaker 1: Peter is sinking.
Speaker 1: Peter needs help.
Speaker 1: So he cries out to Jesus and through the faithfulness of Jesus and the stability of Jesus, he's saved, because Jesus remains faithful even in the storm.
Speaker 1: Even when Peter's faith is wavering or when Peter loses his solid ground, jesus doesn't.
Speaker 1: So he cries out, but the one thing he knows can help him, and that's Jesus, and he saves him.
Speaker 1: Peter cries out and he saves him.
Speaker 1: Now, there are all kinds of moments like this in Peter's life, which is they're hilarious and some are just moving and compelling.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if, when Peter's an old man writing this letter to these people in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, and he says, hey, you have a hope and a salvation through Jesus, I wonder what he's thinking about.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if, in part, this image doesn't cross his mind.
Speaker 1: At least once he cried out to Jesus and Jesus saved him.
Speaker 1: How could this not cross his mind?
Speaker 1: I have no way of knowing.
Speaker 1: I just wonder if this morning out there he thought of this See for Peter, salvation was an experience first and a doctrine second.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid sometimes we turn it into a doctrine first, a disembodied, removed from story sort of statement, when salvation almost every occurrence in the Bible is about an experience, about being saved.
Speaker 1: I was saved when I was seven years old and my mom left my dad for the final time.
Speaker 1: My dad was an abusive alcoholic and their marriage was chaos and utter turmoil for many years and it was tough.
Speaker 1: We left many times and I don't know why this time this was the final time we left.
Speaker 1: That's me, on the left there, a young handsome boy with the side part.
Speaker 1: That's my brother in the middle there.
Speaker 1: He's actually my half-brother and my sister and we were all saved when we left him that final time.
Speaker 1: I don't know why again, it stuck that time, but we left him and never came back and it saved our lives.
Speaker 1: I'm convinced of it and my mom would tell you it was only through the grace of God that it happened.
Speaker 1: So Jesus saved me.
Speaker 1: When I was about seven years old.
Speaker 1: I was also saved, I think around like 11, 12 years old.
Speaker 1: We found a church when we had left my dad.
Speaker 1: It was years later.
Speaker 1: That was a life-giving church.
Speaker 1: Here's a picture of me with some friends of mine at this church.
Speaker 1: I'll give you one guess as to which one's me.
Speaker 1: This was one of our leadership teams and it was a church in Denver called Heritage Christian Center.
Speaker 1: It was awesome.
Speaker 1: I loved it and I fell in love with Jesus in a very real way.
Speaker 1: And these were my friends and we did ministry all over the place.
Speaker 1: We were like a drama troupe, like a drama theater.
Speaker 1: We'd preach sermons, we'd pray it and we had adults there wasn't just us kids, but and we'd go to juvenile detention centers, we'd go to inner city churches, we'd go to jails and it was incredible and I saw God move in mighty and powerful ways and I met people whose very lives depended on the saving grace of Jesus and I was saved.
Speaker 1: No doubt my life is forever different because of those days and those years of that church heritage Christian center and my youth pastor, andre Cooper, who was here.
Speaker 1: If you remember, years ago when I got ordained, he came to visit me I think it was when I was installed as lead pastor.
Speaker 1: He came, him and his wife, moana, flew up from Florida and they came to be with me.
Speaker 1: It was a wonderful gift and I was saved.
Speaker 1: I was saved years later when I met Katie.
Speaker 1: I know, right, yeah, and saved my life and I don't know, I don't think I would encourage people to get married to solve your problems, but it helped my problems.
Speaker 1: It really did.
Speaker 1: It stabilized me.
Speaker 1: I was 19 or I was 20 years old, about to be 21.
Speaker 1: And it was like the best time of my life to get married, because my life was like going eight different directions and Katie really saved my life.
Speaker 1: So Katie's from Elk River she's the one who read the scripture, by the way and, yeah, saved my life.
Speaker 1: And Katie, I will always undoubtedly tell you, was a gift from God to me in every way.
Speaker 1: Even you know, back then I didn't have a clue because I was young and dumb and but now I look like, oh my gosh, this is a gift from God and Jesus, I think, saved me through this union.
Speaker 1: And I was saved again many years later when these four crumb snatchers came into my life.
Speaker 1: This picture is funny because I was so tired that day.
Speaker 1: I came home from work, I was exhausted from doing whatever I was doing and I just wanted to lay down and like rest.
Speaker 1: And I lay down and I was so tired I didn't go to the bed or the couch, I was like in the carpet.
Speaker 1: I'm like I'm just tired and they wouldn't leave me alone.
Speaker 1: I'm like you guys, I'm super tired.
Speaker 1: Can I just have like a minute of peace and being alone?
Speaker 1: No, they wouldn't, and they just sort of dog piling onto me.
Speaker 1: This was not stage, this was like real life.
Speaker 1: I'm like dad, come on and I'm like I should take a picture of this, you know.
Speaker 1: And then I had to laugh.
Speaker 1: I saw that picture.
Speaker 1: But you want I mean man, you want to talk about salvation.
Speaker 1: Jesus rescued me with these kids and I can tell you copious stories again and again and again about the ways, but I don't want to bore you but just to say that these four kids saved my life.
Speaker 1: See, the dictionary defines salvation as this preservation or deliverance from harm or ruin or loss.
Speaker 1: What do you need to be saved from this morning?
Speaker 1: See the primary, primarily the meaning of the original Greek and Hebrew words that we translate as salvation.
Speaker 1: They were primarily not a religious term.
Speaker 1: They literally meant being saved from dying, physically saved from danger or death or destruction, like an actual, literal, physical salvation.
Speaker 1: It meant, in the most general sense, rescue, to be rescued from something that was dangerous.
Speaker 1: And so NT Wright, the famous New Testament theologian, in his translation he writes first Peter, like this is what he says, he uses the word rescue this has brought us into an incorruptible inheritance.
Speaker 1: This inheritance you've been given.
Speaker 1: It's not corruptible, just so you know that this is good news.
Speaker 1: You can't damage it, which nothing can stain or diminish it, this inheritance that Christ is going to give to you, you can't stain it or diminish it.
Speaker 1: So, just so we're clear, what can stain or diminish this inheritance?
Speaker 1: Okay, good, just so we're all clear.
Speaker 1: At the moment, it's kept safe for you in the heavens, by the way, the heavens it's best to think about that the place where God dwells.
Speaker 1: But in Scripture and in Jesus it's not somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Sometimes in our we have this sort of platonic, dualistic kind of mindset where, like, like heaven is somewhere else, or like Jesus or God is like somewhere else far away.
Speaker 1: Rather, it's like no, he's somehow here, very intimately connected to this time and place, but it's just we can't fully experience him yet.
Speaker 1: There's like a veil or something that sort of.
Speaker 1: But it's not somewhere else, it's right here now, while you're being kept safe by God's power.
Speaker 1: It's God's power that keeps you safe.
Speaker 1: I think Peter knew that Through faith for a salvation or a rescue, that is already and it's waiting to be revealed in due time.
Speaker 1: So it's a rescue from danger or defeat or distress.
Speaker 1: And in my experience and I've talked with many folks professionally here in the office after services, even just privately or publicly, out of the baseball fields or in a gym or out at the grocery store a number of people I know Christians, non-christians, people, a faith people that don't like to have faith, all kinds of people and there seems to be this deep longing and need for salvation and they talk about it a lot, unknowingly, many times, that I hear in their voices, in their stories, in their lives, a hope for an end of the despair and a salvation and a rescuing from a number of things in their life.
Speaker 1: So I hear in conversations you can look on social media and see it any different direction.
Speaker 1: You can throw a stone in any direction.
Speaker 1: Five feet from you You'll hit a social media post.
Speaker 1: It's about a longing to be saved or rescued from something.
Speaker 1: I hear it in, see it in movies, in all kinds of pop culture, and I hear it in songs.
Speaker 1: One of the greatest songs, nay, the greatest song of all time Wonderwall, by Oasis let's go.
Speaker 1: You know what's up.
Speaker 1: It says all the roads we have to walk are winding.
Speaker 1: How many of you have ever walked a winding road in your life?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we took a poll, and all the lights that lead us there are blinding.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you can't see where you're going.
Speaker 1: These brothers were prophets, am I right?
Speaker 1: Too bad, they couldn't get along.
Speaker 1: There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don't know how, because maybe you're going to be the one that saves me and after a while, yummab what's a Wonderwall anyway?
Speaker 1: But anyway, great song, man, I hear it.
Speaker 1: I hear it.
Speaker 1: There's this strong undercurrent in our culture of people longing for salvation, and if you listen, you'll hear it and you'll see it in all kinds of places.
Speaker 1: And, unlike Peter, who knew exactly who to cry out to, I think many folks don't know who to cry out to or who can help them, and so, as I've often said, they will reach out for all kinds of other things that are unstable, not faithful and cannot save them, whether it's a new job or a new spouse, or money or fame or sex or any number of addictions.
Speaker 1: We grab onto these things as though they can save us when they're just as unstable as we are.
Speaker 1: And so it's one drowning person grabbing onto another drowning person and it doesn't work and the ache and the despair and the longing only is amplified even further.
Speaker 1: And I think if you ask a lot of people in modern day, hey, what is Christian salvation look like for you?
Speaker 1: They would probably say, oh, it's Jesus saving us from the consequences of our sins.
Speaker 1: So saving us from hell, probably, as they would say, and in order that when we die we can go to heaven.
Speaker 1: And in their minds you can look at any Hallmark card and see it it's some disembodied floating on a cloud, ethereal, playing a harp.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a weird image.
Speaker 1: That's what they mean by salvation.
Speaker 1: The problem is, this is not a Jewish understanding, or even a biblical understanding of hope or of salvation.
Speaker 1: In the Jewish story there was not any kind of connotation or any kind of illusion or image of an end of the space-time universe.
Speaker 1: This idea of a non-physical spiritual bliss is not in the Jewish story at all.
Speaker 1: Rather, they were concerned.
Speaker 1: Their salvation concerned God's activity within time and space, within history, saving us right here and right now, what the Jews would say, and saving them in whatever sort of calamity they were in.
Speaker 1: Because to say that we are going to be rescued and saved out of here to some disembodied place was a rejection of this creation of monotheism that they embraced, that God had called this place good and had filled it with goodness, and then, for Christians, the incarnation was an affirmation of this time and place.
Speaker 1: God becomes a human in the here and now, and so why would we be saved out of here to go somewhere else?
Speaker 1: That would reject this very Jewish theological idea and also imply that the creative order was evil innately, or that the human body so noctisism, if this is interesting for you or platonic dualism, is the idea that the body is evil or bad innately, or even a second right version of something else that's better.
Speaker 1: That's not Jewish theology, and even early Christian theology would have rejected that idea that well, some noastics didn't, but that this is an evil place.
Speaker 1: I don't mean that it doesn't have sin or consequences of sin, but that innately it's this evil thing.
Speaker 1: That's not how the Jews saw this place For them being rescued or being saved, and being saved from their national enemies, which everyone's at might be at the time.
Speaker 1: So in the first century, when Jesus shows up, it'd be Rome.
Speaker 1: They wanted to be saved from the real oppression of the Roman Empire, which is a physical embodiment of this dark evil that it also exists in the world, very real, but it's embodied by the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1: And they were oppressed, they were murdering people.
Speaker 1: It was a horrible time.
Speaker 1: They wanted a restoration of Shalom, so that these images of their men and women sitting under a shade of a vine or a fig tree and the temple being restored and, by the way, jesus calls himself the temple and then later he calls you the temple and restoration back to the land.
Speaker 1: So salvation was always in history.
Speaker 1: Right here and right now, in fact, in Exodus, the people of Israel are saved.
Speaker 1: Here's how they're saved that day, the Lord saved them from the hands of the Egyptians, like they were literally saved from dying and being slaughtered, and God, of course, saves them Now.
Speaker 1: Early Christians would also add that for them being saved, and being saved from the ultimate and final enemy, the enemy of death.
Speaker 1: See, death meant the end of this God given bodily life, that God breathed into us this life, a gift from God, a beautiful gift, and that wasn't gonna last forever.
Speaker 1: That death had somehow had sway over our lives and it's sort of, for many theologians, tied up with sin and the devil, the evil one and all these things, kind of coalesce in death and what death means.
Speaker 1: And for early Christians salvation meant.
Speaker 1: And hey, the end of death itself and rescuing from death.
Speaker 1: In other words, resurrection, life and life everlasting, ongoing life, not just now but also now, but also in the sort of the age, what they would call the age to come.
Speaker 1: And for Paul, if you read Romans eight, paul and others thought, not just in the human individual life, although that, but also the whole of creation, the whole thing would experience a resurrection, a renewing, a recreation.
Speaker 1: Something brand new would happen in the whole of creation.
Speaker 1: Paul says that the whole creation has been groaning and longing for salvation to come, and then that, of course, that hope is fulfilled and the salvation comes to us through who?
Speaker 1: Jesus?
Speaker 1: Yeah, some of you got it it's always Jesus.
Speaker 1: If you don't know the answer, just guess Jesus.
Speaker 1: These stories are all fulfilled in the person of Jesus of Nazareth in the first century the prophets.
Speaker 1: Peter writes if you heard Katie read it, I know it's a longer passage, but Peter reminds him.
Speaker 1: The prophets of the Jewish people were longing for a restoration and it's come to us in Jesus, the Messiah.
Speaker 1: So all the things the prophets were waiting for.
Speaker 1: The prophets were famous men and women of the Jewish story.
Speaker 1: They were waiting, they were longing for salvation to come, and Peter, it came in Jesus.
Speaker 1: It's been here, it's Jesus, and also in the resurrection of Jesus it's brought forward.
Speaker 1: And so John, his gospel, reminds you on a number of occasions that Jesus was resurrected on the first day of the week.
Speaker 1: It's like it's almost ad nauseam.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, it was the first day of the week.
Speaker 1: He says it several times.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because if you're watching and paying attention, that means it's the first day of a brand new week, a brand new day at the beginning of a brand new week.
Speaker 1: Something brand new is happening here.
Speaker 1: Watch it.
Speaker 1: And then he says oh, this Mary, who knew Jesus, sees him and thinks he's a gardener, which is kind of silly.
Speaker 1: Like why would he do that?
Speaker 1: Well, in Jewish lore, gardens are very prominent images and the most prominent is, of course, the Garden of Eden.
Speaker 1: So what John is saying is like hey, it's a new day, a new era has dawned right now, and it's gonna look like the garden Now you're cooking with some gas.
Speaker 1: That was salvation, and it was brought in Jesus, for the individual, but also for the whole of creation.
Speaker 1: And so in Matthew 1, 21, it says that she will give birth to a son and she'll name him Jesus.
Speaker 1: It's always Jesus.
Speaker 1: I told you, I warned you guys.
Speaker 1: The answer is always Jesus, and in the Hebrew it's Yeshua or Joshua, which means the one who saves.
Speaker 1: And then it says he will save us from our sins.
Speaker 1: This is what they call Jesus.
Speaker 1: They call him the saving one, the Savior.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 1: In his life, we get a vision of what true humanity looks like.
Speaker 1: If you're confused, what it looks like to live a full life.
Speaker 1: Look at Jesus.
Speaker 1: How do he treat others?
Speaker 1: How do he engage with his enemies?
Speaker 1: How do you talk?
Speaker 1: How did he approach the powers, the evil powers of the Roman and so on?
Speaker 1: How did he hang out with folks who were marginalized or cast out of society?
Speaker 1: How did he respond to violence?
Speaker 1: His life is an image of the ideal human life.
Speaker 1: In coming with the Father.
Speaker 1: It's this beautiful picture.
Speaker 1: So read those stories.
Speaker 1: We were saved in the life of Jesus.
Speaker 1: We're also saved in the death of Jesus On the cross.
Speaker 1: Jesus absorbs all of the sin, we're told, and all the violent evil that the powers have to dish out.
Speaker 1: There are all these powers at work and at play on the cross and they all kind of coalesce in and on Jesus and he absorbs all of them.
Speaker 1: He never retaliates and sort of unmasks the powers or the violent sort of the enemies and all the violent tendencies of the world.
Speaker 1: They're all unmasked right there on the cross.
Speaker 1: And we're saved in the death of Jesus.
Speaker 1: But, as Paul writes, if Jesus doesn't resurrect it's all for nothing.
Speaker 1: So it's the resurrection, the culmination, the victory of God in that moment where he overcomes sin, death, the devil, darkness, despair, hopelessness, all these things, and he overcomes them, absorbs them and then comes back and he conquers sin, death and the devil.
Speaker 1: So, friends, you were saved then in the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus.
Speaker 1: You were saved back then.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite theologians is German named Karl Barth, says he was asked one time hey, when were you saved?
Speaker 1: And many times our response and I get it is like oh, I was saved when I was 14.
Speaker 1: I went to summer camp and there was this preacher there and I said this prayer, great praise God.
Speaker 1: But Karl Barth's response.
Speaker 1: They said hey, when were you saved?
Speaker 1: He responded I was saved around 33 AD.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dang right, you are and were.
Speaker 1: That's when you were saved.
Speaker 1: Jesus saved you.
Speaker 1: He even says it is finished.
Speaker 1: So you were saved back then on the cross.
Speaker 1: The work is done.
Speaker 1: Also, I would say you're saved now and now, and now and now.
Speaker 1: You get the point, because really all we have is the now and now.
Speaker 1: Right, I don't have that moment of moment of go, but I have the now and I'm saved right here.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 1: I was at a wedding yesterday.
Speaker 1: My friend's Greg and Barb, their son Jacob, got married to Brianna and we were outside the certificate and I held it and I go hey, I've got one last piece of advice for you two.
Speaker 1: You're like what?
Speaker 1: So never forget this.
Speaker 1: This certificate makes you legally married, but this piece of paper does not make you married every day, from here until whenever one of you dies.
Speaker 1: It's not how it works If you never saw each other again, or never talked or bought each other flowers or made breakfast together or went on a vacation and yet you said we're married because that license was signed 50 years ago.
Speaker 1: We all think you were crazy.
Speaker 1: No, you have to work out your marriage.
Speaker 1: Every morning you wake up and I go okay, I'm gonna go love that person again, I'm gonna go make them breakfast, I'm gonna go buy them some flowers, I'm gonna love them, I'm gonna treat them.
Speaker 1: You know, whatever the case might be, you're married every day.
Speaker 1: That certificate was like the beginning of it and it's important.
Speaker 1: I mean great, but you would never like.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm married.
Speaker 1: No, you're married every day.
Speaker 1: Salvation's the same way.
Speaker 1: We're sort of always working out our salvation with fear and tremble and we're saved now and every day I wake up and have a chance to submit my life to Jesus in the here and now, not just when I was 14, or when I was five or when I was 10, or at baptism.
Speaker 1: Those are all wonderful, but I submit my life every day to Jesus and that's where I'm saved.
Speaker 1: Again, we take communion, like every other week here.
Speaker 1: It's a reminder, it's this ongoing process of Jesus saving me From whatever calamities I'm encountering and facing.
Speaker 1: So you were saved back then and you're also saved now, because you're invited to participate every day in the eternally full life of the triune God.
Speaker 1: Every day you're invited to be a part of this thing, this wonderful dance, to live in the ways of Jesus every day, to respond accordingly to your enemies, to take care of those who are poor, to reach out to those who need it, to bring a casserole to your friend who's suffering.
Speaker 1: That's the salvation of God working out in you and in your life and you can choose it every day and live in tune with that.
Speaker 1: You can be awake or not.
Speaker 1: You can be holy and healed, whole and shalom.
Speaker 1: Now A couple of verses to back me up here.
Speaker 1: I want you to know who you are and where you sit today.
Speaker 1: So, according to the Bible, you've been seated with Christ.
Speaker 1: You are with and in Christ.
Speaker 1: Paul writes it a number of times You're in Christ.
Speaker 1: I know some mornings you wake up and you feel kind of crabby and your hair looks a little bit off and you don't love your outfit.
Speaker 1: I get it, I've been there.
Speaker 1: But I'm telling you you're seated with Christ.
Speaker 1: That's good news.
Speaker 1: You've been made a participant in the divine nature.
Speaker 1: You're like oh, my makeup look kind of bad today.
Speaker 1: Fair enough.
Speaker 1: But, hey, you've been made a participant in the divine nature of God.
Speaker 1: So how about that?
Speaker 1: It's pretty good.
Speaker 1: Somehow you are invited into this divine dance to try you in God.
Speaker 1: I can't explain it much more than that, but that's what it is.
Speaker 1: And you've been blessed with all these blessings in the heavenly realms.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean a brand new porcelain 11, twin, turbo, black one with a convertible soft top, and I don't mean, like all the fruits you pull you can eat.
Speaker 1: I don't mean that there are these blessings, real riches of life, blessings you can have, and God's own life is my favorite has been placed in you and often well up like a well of living water, because you've got living water in you and so you're being saved every day and living water might just pour out of you any moment, because all we have is the.
Speaker 1: Now Jesus tells Zacchaeus hey, salvation has come to your house today.
Speaker 1: Now here's the tension, though you might be saying yourself great.
Speaker 1: So I was saved back then in 33 AD and many moments throughout my whole life.
Speaker 1: I'm being saved now.
Speaker 1: But, man, there's also things in my life and in the world that just don't line up with this divine vision of God and wholeness and shalom.
Speaker 1: There's parts of me that still feel broken and I can't get over my own anger and sometimes I don't love my enemy.
Speaker 1: And my father just died and my neighbor, I just man.
Speaker 1: They've got all these issues and things and problems that contradict sort of this vision of shalom.
Speaker 1: They're still around and for that I would offer this final bit that you also will be saved in fullness in the future somehow that we live in the in-between time.
Speaker 1: We really do.
Speaker 1: We live in this in-between space where, like, the kingdom of God has come in Jesus he says it a number of times and yet you still have this Roman Empire, even while he's talking about it, that's still in control.
Speaker 1: So there's like a nowness and a not yetness to this whole vision of the kingdom of God.
Speaker 1: But one day we're totally coming in fullness and we will see Sonia's dad again and your relatives and the creation will be made whole once again and it will look like somehow resurrection life, like they recognize Jesus but they kind of didn't recognize him, so like a glorified state of being, not some ethereal disembodied somewhere else in the heavens playing a harp, but something very much in this place and time, and it'll look like I think you I'm just guessing but you might recognize each other and that kind of thing but it's like a whole healing, restoration of this whole thing.
Speaker 1: So Paul in Ephesians writes it like, and I love this verse, that's what he says In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us With all the wisdom and understanding.
Speaker 1: He made known to us the mystery of his will.
Speaker 1: According to his good pleasure, I mean, god is pleased to have this be his great will.
Speaker 1: If you want to know what's the will of God, this is what it is.
Speaker 1: I actually have this hanging in my office.
Speaker 1: I'm like this is the will of God and it's not like he's begrudgingly gonna have it.
Speaker 1: He's pleased to have this be his plan and his will.
Speaker 1: What he proposed or purposed in Christ.
Speaker 1: You see it in Christ To be put into full effect when the times reach your fulfillment here.
Speaker 1: It is To bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
Speaker 1: And we're invited now to live in this way and to live in tune with this dramatic vision and also know that it will come in fullness, I believe, at a date later.
Speaker 1: In closing, I want to offer you just a couple of thoughts.
Speaker 1: On Facebook I asked some friends hey, how would you define salvation?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read you like five of them and then we'll get out of here.
Speaker 1: Here's what one person said Salvation really is an undressing the ways of the old man and woman.
Speaker 1: Like disrobing from the old way of life, old patterns the old Adam, you might call it Paul calls that and clothing with the new man or woman, like putting on the new clothes.
Speaker 1: I'm a child of God.
Speaker 1: Salvation, also one person said, is the ongoing healing from lies that we believe about ourselves I love that Others and also lies about others and the divine.
Speaker 1: And lies about God, based on a revelation of love that made everything so in undoing all the lies that you believe for many, many years and receiving a fresh vision of what God is doing and his love For God so loved the whole world.
Speaker 1: How about this one?
Speaker 1: Salvation is freedom from my destructive self.
Speaker 1: Can I get an amen?
Speaker 1: That one hits a little too close to home for many of us, but good, that's what you need.
Speaker 1: Saving from Peter knew Salvation also might mean this Life in the ways of Jesus.
Speaker 1: One friend says that salvation is Jonah's cry from the belly of the whale.
Speaker 1: In Jonah, chapter two, central.
Speaker 1: May you know that you were saved by Jesus and his work on the cross While you were yet a sinner, christ died for you.
Speaker 1: It's done.
Speaker 1: And while you also know that you're being saved now, that there are moments in your life where you live out of congruence with the ways of the cross, and may you come back into alignment with that and live in tune with this fulfillment or with this promise of Jesus on the cross.
Speaker 1: May you live in tune with that now and live and engage in the ways of Jesus here and now and love your enemies and forgive other people and be generous and be full of hope.
Speaker 1: And if you're not, then be with others who are and kind of lean on them in those moments and be good to each other and be people of hope.
Speaker 1: And then also ultimately know that you've been saved for a future resurrection and that one day, as Paul writes, we'll experience what he calls the first fruits of resurrection, that what happened in Jesus was like a foreshadowing of what will happen to all of us.
Speaker 1: There will one day be a great resurrection and that'll include you and, according to Paul and Romans eight, the whole of creation.
Speaker 1: So this morning may you have hope and may you live and be saved Amen.