Immigration

Where Do We Stand-Kirk Rupprecht

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Run it back. Okay. What's going on? How's everybody doing? Good to be here this morning. We are going through week five of our series of Where Do We Stand? And the reason we're going through this series is we want to just, as followers of Jesus, get a little bit of an understanding of, you know, where do we stand on certain topics of today? And we are in a culture where we're being bombarded with many different messages, right? Messages for social media, messages from cable news, things like that. And yet, as the church, our job is to uh inform through scripture, you know, where where should we stand on some of these issues? And last week we looked at an issue that was pretty um pretty difficult, I would say. And we did it during daylight savings time, so I don't even know what I said last week. So please grace on that. But um now that last week we talked about political polarization, and this week we're gonna kind of move at another very heavy topic, uh, one that's pretty, I would say, um, relevant to even where we are locationally uh as as we stand here in North Jersey. And uh it's it's the topic today that we're gonna look after is um immigration. Um and here's the thing, we are we are kind of in a moment where even like I said, where we are locally, we're uh recognizing there's there's a potential um just right up the street here in Mount Alden Roxbury for um what would be called a uh a detention center and uh that would house uh immigrants who who are been deported. And so I think many of us have have heard very strong opinions. Maybe we have our own strong opinions, and maybe we're you know, we've heard local leaders who are speaking in out, neighbors are speaking out, and so as as those voices rise, I think what we what would really help us right now is just the church, right? That we'd come together and we'd really just look at like what is what does the word of God say? Right? How do we respond to these issues? And so, as we've done throughout the series, before we make any sort of determination or where we stand, our hope really is that we're standing, uh uh recognizing the way we stand. And that's our posture. And we we've spoken about this all through the series. We've gone at this with humility, delicacy, openness, and and ultimately biblically, right? We want a biblical foundation to inform us on our posture and where we stand. So I want to just be upfront about this conversation. It might be uh really challenging for some of us here today. I see for some, this is a deeply personal topic. Maybe it involves loved ones, family members, coworkers, neighbors who've been living in fear, right? Fear of just their daily disruption, maybe even fear of family separation, fear of just being torn from everything familiar. I I actually recently experienced this um particularly personally with a friend and uh fellow disciple of Jesus who was he was picked up on his way to work and sent to a detention center in Texas. He was just left from his taken away from his wife and his three children, and now the family has has no idea about the whereabouts. And so I just want to share this. My hope is that I can be objective today, but I I will be honest, I'm carrying a little bit of personal connection to this. And uh, but I but I pray the spirit will bring out any objectivity that's needed. Now, but for others, maybe the conversation isn't um as personal. Maybe um perhaps there's no close connections to this issue. Maybe perhaps um the primary concern is is is governance and maintaining order, upholding laws, ensuring structure. And last week we talked about that. We talked about that's God's design, right? For for governing and having structure and order. And and still there may be some of us who maybe don't really even know where where we should stand on this. Maybe we're unsure how a follower of Jesus is to walk when it comes to this particular issue. And what does it look like to be faithful to Christ in this this topic? So, with all those entry points, I really just feel it's it's helpful today that we walk through this with a level of, I would say, uh humility. Humility. And that's that's that's kind of my hope. And I want to just be clear about something else. Um, I don't believe God has called me to solve a deeply complex national issue this morning, right? I'm not here to like craft policy, I'm not here to outline, I would say, like perfect legislation. Uh I'm not here to present just like a solution that's gonna really fix something that's systematically broken. And that disclaimer is not coming from a space of like apathy or indifference. It's really, it's I I truly believe it's humility because these issues they carry, I would say, complexities, right? Legal, economic, humanitarian, political dimensions, and these are layered in their difficult conversations. So my role isn't to resolve any sort of policy. My role strictly is to help us think about well, how do followers of Jesus engage? How do we engage this conversation? How do we use our voices? How do we move towards honoring Christ? How should we love, maybe, how do we love our neighbors or even in these complicated spaces? So I'm not gonna really want to take political side or another. I don't want to, you know, dive in with policy. I I just want to talk about really, I think, where the heart of this issue starts. I think the heart of the issue is we first need to talk about people. People. Because immigration is not first a policy problem, it's first it's a people reality. And the way of Jesus has always begun there with people. And so here's how I want to start this. I want to offer a foundation that views from the space of a kind of a fancy word here, uh, of our ontologically, okay, ontological standing. That's a big fun word. Uh, if if if do you want a definition of that? Uh, if you're not familiar with it, here's what the term really is. It's it's an adjective and it describes the nature of being, okay? This word is actually typically used when we talk about uh trying to uh describe God, right? Who he is, his being, his attributes, what makes God, well, what makes him God. But this morning, I want to explore that term through the lens of the ontological nature of human beings. What identifies someone ontologically as human? What defines our level of our being? And but because I want to think this topic through, because I think at times immigration, it can sometimes fail to recognize like this importance of the shared ontological makeup that declares someone a person. Right, where labels have taken the place of what makes one actually human, whether that's labeled by society or government as what is deemed legal or illegal to be a human. So let's draw this out. And I want to start through scripture. I want to start by looking at what's called the Imago Dei. It's the image of God. It's a doctrine that is the first doctrine we're gonna look at here this morning. Here's what it declares: it declares that every human being is created by God, and within that, that created beings we exist reflecting who he is. We are reflections, we are bearers of his image. We see this in the creation story in Genesis. It tells us this. Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his what in his own image. The image of God he created him, male and female, he created them. So at the foundation of every human being, here's what lies this reality that each person bears the image of God. Each person exists from the reality of his likeness. So that means every human being has been given at conception something like worth, value, something like dignity. And not because of nationality, not because of documentation, not because of economic contribution, but because God himself assigned that worth. And so when we look at someone who might be labeled by some sort of nation or government as legal or illegal, we got we gotta remember those are man-made distinctions. They're not ontological realities. God didn't create two categories of image bearers, right? Those legally created with his worth and value, and those illegally created with worth and dignity. There was no such category when we talk about the story of Genesis. And so, as those who adhere to the biblical account of creation, when we view other image bearers, our primary lens, I believe it needs to be the same as the lens of our creator, not the lens of the creation around us. And that means this all human life is determined by God to have value. Whether that life is existing fully in this world or in the process of being brought into this world, the reality is that the sanctity of life, and maybe you've heard this before, but it's a call for Jesus followers from the womb to the tomb, is true. Because God values image bearers. Why? He reveals himself to those around through his image. When we value life, here's what we're doing. We're ultimately valuing the one whose image that life reflects, God Himself. And this is one of the ways God acknowledges the value of life. He does this through the way he determined to send Jesus into this world. Think about this. The incarnation, it reveals God's value for humanity. It's precisely why God sent Jesus in human form. Look what Hebrews tells us. But in the last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things. Through him, he also created the world. He's the radiance of the glory of God, the exact inference of his nature. He upholds the universe by the word of his power. So God sent Jesus in the form of human life. Yes, of course, to reveal the beauty of salvation through the gospel, but also to reveal his value for human right life. Think about it real quick. God, he could have chosen to enter the creation in some other way. Right? He could have chosen, I don't know, an elephant. He could have chosen a donkey, copybera, whatever that thing is. Everybody talks about it. I don't know what it is, but it's like a radical one. I don't know. But he could have chosen to incarnate as like a mountain, a tree, a flower, but he didn't. He came as man. Why? Because humanity uniquely bears the image of God. So the first ontological value of humanity is this we share the in bearing the image of God. Here's the next ontological shared makeup. It's this, it's the fullness of our being. So ontologically speaking, the makeup of human includes these certain characteristics: a physical body, a mind, a heart, a soul, a shared spiritual reality within all of humanity. And we see this reflected in the directive that God gives to his people in Deuteronomy. Look what it says. And it's a declaration that acknowledges God first and foremost, but then it acknowledges the fullness of our being. Jesus, he expands on this later in Matthew and affirms it. He says, Matthew 22, he said to them, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourselves. So Jesus, he acknowledges this ontological makeup, heart, soul, mind. But I love about Jesus here, he doesn't stop there. Look what he does. He connects loving God with this, with loving loving neighbor, loving others. And so the way we view image bearers, it's directly tied or tied to the way we treat other image bearers. And that raises a natural question: who is my neighbor? Who is my neighbor?

unknown 12:44

Mr.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

Rogers tried to tell us, but Jesus will give us a better example. Um, this isn't a new question for Jesus either, right? Jesus was asked this question by a lawyer in the crowd, and his answer has everything, I think, to do with how we think about something like immigration. Look what he says. But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor? Jesus replied, A man was going down to Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down the road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place of saw him, passed on by the other side. But a Samaritan, it's a really important detail, a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him, bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him into an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two dinari and gave them into the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him, whatever you spend, I will repay you when I come back. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? He said, The one who showed mercy. And Jesus said, You go and do likewise. Now, um, I can imagine as a culture we're we're kind of familiar with this good Samaritan um story. Even those maybe outside the church are just kind of checking this out, it's referenced really as a model of how we should value and care for others. But here's the thing to truly grasp what Jesus is referring to and declaring, we got we gotta slow down for a minute and consider the deeper context of what Jesus is talking about. Because we often read this parable and we're kind of like, you know, reduced to something like manageable for us in our in our day, right? I need to be a good neighbor, I need to lend out my snowblower, I need to invite somebody over for tea, right? But but that's not even close to the weight of what Jesus is calling his listeners to. See, for those in the crowd hearing this for the first time, this parable, it wouldn't have been like sentimental in any value. It would have felt incredibly offensive. It would have stirred up anger, criticism, right, rage. Why? Well, because to a Jewish audience, Samaritans, right, told you to highlight that Samaritans, they were not simply people from like a different town. They were viewed as religious compromisers, ethnic outsiders, uh, territorial intruders. From the Jewish worldview, Samaritans did not belong. They were to be avoided, they were not to be acknowledged, they were to be shunned, they were not to be embraced. And yet Jesus does something radical. Look what he does. He centers the Samaritan as the example for compassion. And so what is Jesus doing here? He's affirming the ontological value and worth given to all image bearers of God, not just those who share the same ethnicity, who share the same region, tradition, moral framework, right? This this claim is radical because what Jesus is doing, he's subverting the categories of like us and them. He's just getting rid of them. And he's dismantling the indoctrination that assigns human value based on something like territory, tribe, or ethnicity or race. For a Jewish listener, being cared for by a Samaritan, someone they consider religiously and socially inferior, that would have been incredibly scandalous. That's why Jesus said it. Or even wrong. But here's the thing Jesus isn't concerned about reinforcing the ways of man. He's he wants to reveal the ways of God. And God's way evalues human life. God's way assigns worth, dignity, agency to every life that bears his image. So let's ask, well, why begin with this ontologically? Why start here? Well, here's what here's my thought. I don't think the primary concern um in our conversation right now is whether, you know, it pitting up like the values of order and and policy versus kind of what what scripture says in regards to um the the way we view other people, right? That that scripture does affirm, we talked about last week, affirms governance and structure, right? We can we can highlight those values, yet at the same time hold the value that God desires to preserve human dignity and human decency. And so for the follower of Jesus, I think what we have to do is before we affirm any sort of policy, any sort of directive, any sort of legislation, we need to ask the question does this reflect human decency? Does this uphold the dignity of image bearers? And and I I I just want to take a moment just to do an honest reflection. I from where we currently stand in our in our time, just some personal, I guess, examination of some policies and practices, it seems to appear, it seems to reflect more, I would say, cruelty than dignity. Creating holding cells, tearing families apart, entering even places of sanctuary, like houses of worship to detain individuals labeled as like illegal. So we have to ask, is that dignity? Because that is that decency? It's difficult, right, not to see elements of like cruelty in some of those approaches. Now, now maybe the pushback goes like is this well what what do you mean? Do you just want like total leniency? Right? Should there be no legal framework? Right? Should we embrace and just in complete anarchy? And my answer is no. No. Last week we talked about governance, how God allows authority and structure in this world, but it's for his good. Pure anarchy is not anarchy is not a biblical solution, right? Order matters, boundaries matter. But here's the thing I don't think the question is either order or dignity. The question is this can we pursue order while preserving dignity? And I I believe I believe we can, I believe we must. Order with dignity. Think about this example from the sports world, okay? Every sport we love, right, operates within boundaries and structure. Football fans, right, there's end zones. Baseball, basketball, there's out-of-bound lines, things like that, right? And and we have things like fouls or penalties, and they exist to preserve order. So the game, it can be played without chaos, right? But what happens when maybe official makes a bad call? Or maybe even favors one team over another? Even though their role is to enforce order, right? When it's handed handled poorly, what happens typically is tensions are tensions rise, right? How many times people have yelled at a ref before? Don't raise your hand. No, I'm just kidding. Uh but but when the game becomes like distorted, right? Frustration, it it spreads not just among players, but among spectators. And I think that can be true when it comes to things like governance, right? Those who are tasked with oversight of making decisions that maybe at times appear unjust, imbalanced, or disproportionately harsh. The result around us, if we see things like tension within this process and within the public. And so, my my concern just for our current conversation is not the existence of order. Order's good. It's whether the enforcement of that order, if that reflects dignity. Because you got to think about this word immigrant, right? This is another concern. The term immigrant has always been part of this country's story since its inception. At the founding of this nation, nearly everyone except the original inhabitants of this land would have been classified as immigrant. The word just simply it means someone who migrated to a new region. However, today, the term it's taken a different direction on a new weight. It's become loaded, it's become politicized, often dehumanized. Instead of like describing movement, now it it just it seems to just imply suspicion or threat, illegitimacy. When language shifts in that way, here's what happens: it begins to shift the people the way we see people. And if we're not careful, well categories can begin to overshadow things like ontology. Labels can begin to overshadow image bearing. And that's where the follower of Jesus, we we just have to pause. Because before someone is an immigrant, before someone is documented or undocumented, before someone is legal or illegal, they're an image bearer of God. That has to remain primary for the follower of Jesus. And where words like immigrants were once used to describe someone desiring to take up a residence, now they're often replaced with a mindset like this uh words like maybe just invader or infiltrator. Intruder. What once described movement now is framed as almost like takeover. And here's what I think shifted. I think fear. Fear entered that terminology. Statistics are highlighted that show crimes committed by a small minority within a population and this elevated and repeated until now they begin to, that begins to represent the whole uh majority of the public immigration population, right? And once fear takes root, any potential good that could come from uh integration is is dismissed outright. And sadly, I think for many Christians, we've we've maybe absorbed or echoed this posture of fear. And that's a deeply fear is deeply antithetical to the gospel. It runs counter to scripture. Scripture like this for God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control. Or 1 John, there is no fear and love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment. Whoever fears has not been perfected in love. See, see, fear and gospel don't, they don't uh coexist comfortably. And the heartbreaking reality is fear can blind us from something essential, that we, if we're followers of Jesus, if we've been saved by grace, we too were once outsiders. We were once separated from God. We were sojourners, foreigners to his kingdom. And yet through Christ, Christ alone, we have been invited to dwell in the land that we had no natural claim to. That invitation was not founded on anything like our merit. It was founded on this, it was founded on love, on God's love, on Christ's love that was poured out on the cross. And so our sin, our stance towards immigration, here's the thing, it cannot be rooted in fear. It cannot be rooted in rejecting of human dignity. It must be for the follower of Jesus. It must be rooted in love. Out of the love that we ourselves received when we were far off. Look what 1 John says again. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also to ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. So here's where it calls us to stand. It calls each of us who follow Jesus to do this: to remember where we once stood. Wrestle with where we stand. And maybe some of us need to, if that's where we wrestle, maybe some of us need to today is just remember where we once stood in the eyes of God. Look what Paul writes. He says, remember that you were at one time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of the promise, having no hope without God in this world. But now in Christ Jesus, you were once far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ. So you see, one time we were outsiders of the kingdom of God, strangers to the covenant, far off, lost in sin, searching for hope. And when yet when we surrendered to Christ, repenting of sin that entangled us, here's what happened. We were welcomed into redemption through his blood. So that means for the follower of Jesus, I think it's so important that remembering our own journey. If we do that, it makes it really difficult to look down on any stranger without, I would say, confronting our own salvation story, without remembering the warm welcome Jesus He extended to us. Like we brought nothing to the table but our need. And he offered us refuge. And from that space, the love that we've welcomed, we were welcomed into, that lavished upon us with without merit, the call of the disciples to extend that same posture to the strangers among us, to share where we can, to reflect the heart of God who shared everything he could in us to us with in Christ, right? God's heart is for the stranger. God's heart has always been for the stranger. The entire biblical narrative is about welcoming back the lawbreaker, the sinner, the estranged. Look at what he says in the Old Testament. Leviticus says this when a stranger sojourns among you with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall not treat the stranger who sojourns with you as a native among you. You shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Deuteronomy, God goes down, God shares this. He says, He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow. He loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. Remember, this isn't like a politic modern political statement, God's saying here. Like this is the words of the Torah. This is God's law. Right? This is revealing the heart of God. Jesus goes even further. Look what he says in the New Testament. For I was hungry, you gave me food. I was thirsty, you gave me drink. I was a stranger, you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison, you came to me. Then the righteous will answer, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did you see a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothe you? And when did you see sick or in prison visit you? And the king will answer, Truly I say to you, as you did it to the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me. See, here's what I think happens right now, just in our local modern culture. I I think times we get so comfortable where we have rights and we have stability, we forget something. For the follower of Jesus, at least, we forget that at one time we were the least of these. We were longing for the bread of life. We were thirsty for living water. And yes, those were spiritual deficits, but I think for some of us, our journeys to Christ, they included him meeting physical needs as well, right? And God, he met the needs of the stranger. And so our response is to what? Well, where we can meet the needs of the stranger that he places in our path. Because scripture says something else about the stranger. And this is one of the most fascinating, uh, well, for me at least, passages I see in the Bible. It's found in Hebrews. It says this let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware. Remember those who are in prison as those in prison with them, and those who are mistreated since you are in the body. Why show hospitality? Well, first, I think it reflects the heart of God. And and well, who knows? You might be entertaining an angel, right? And listen, I'll be honest, when I this verse was always a little like mystical to me, a little just like mysterious. That was until my dad shared a story with me once. So my parents, they used to invite over people after church on Sundays for dinner. And there's one Sunday, uh kind of a disheveled, frantic-looking guy walked into church. Clearly seemed like he was in need, and so my parents um invited him for lunch and he accepted. So they drove him home, he had the car. Uh my mom fed him. They sat down to eat, just had a really nice conversation or whatever. And just after a bit, the man he decided that uh he said, Hey, he asked where the bathroom was. And so my parents directed him and he walked down the hall. So five minutes passed. Guy's still not at the dinner table. Okay, 10 minutes passed. So, like, uh, you know, it gets awkward. Like, what do you do? Like, hey, buddy, you alright in there? Like, it's weird, right? Uh, and 15 minutes passed finally, and my dad goes, All right, I gotta check in this guy. So he goes checking him, the bathroom door is open, and the man was gone. Now, listen, this is like pre-cell phone day. You couldn't call his buddy, be like, yo, dude, get me out of here. Like, didn't have Alexis, he didn't have even his own car. Guys just disappeared. And to this day, there's there's like no explanation. And my own like North Jersey skeptical mind, I want to create one and be like, ah, well, you know, he had it planned out, his friend was gonna pick him up. Like, no, that's me speculating. My dad didn't give a logical answer either. But here's what he had: he had Hebrews 13. He had hospitality to a stranger. And at that time, who knows? You might be entertaining an angel. Now, listen, I'm not saying that we care for the stranger just in hopes of like hanging out with angels. That would be kind of cool, it's a bonus. But the deeper reality is this if we claim to be recipients of the good news of Jesus, we must remember how Jesus treated us. He offered us the stranger what we did not have, his perfect righteousness. And he didn't require us to share in being part of his tribe to earn it, he didn't require us to align with him politically to earn it. He requires us to he did just require us to receive mercy and grace. And that's what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. We are recipients of grace, we are beneficiaries of mercy, gifted the compassion and care of a loving God. And so, if that's what we've received, well what gives us the right to withhold those same offerings when it comes to the opportunities we might be given? Wouldn't that be hypocrisy? And let's be honest, the witness of the Christian in our culture right now is pretty strained, I don't, especially around topics like this. I don't I don't think we really need more fuel to the fire with hypocrisy. Right? And I think that maybe this is instead an opportunity for us. Maybe God has allowed this to be an opportunity, opportunity not to just preach grace, but to practice what we've received. Grace, mercy, care, compassion. This this topic may be an opportunity to redeem our witness. Right? We welcome people because we reflect a welcoming God. Now, yes, God includes a pathway, right? Jesus, he is the way, the truth, the life. There's a clear path in the kingdom. And in the same way, clear path towards legal residency can be a value, absolutely. But here's the thing we can never value the path over the dignity of the person walking in it. We can advocate for order, yes. We can advocate for clarity, yes, but we must do so from the ontological reality that you unites us as being bearers of the human image bearers of God with bodies, minds, souls, spirits, right? Things that are that are greater unifying us than than the differentiate with us. And Jesus, listen, he welcomes all who desire to receive it. It's not based on ethnicity, not based on skin color, not based on language, right? Spoiler alert, Jesus is probably not gonna speak English when he returns. Um, so uh once again, like we may be in surprise if we're rooting for that, but Jesus celebrates diversity because he designed his creation to be diverse. Diverse but unified, unified under his lordship, unified in worship of his kingdom, all tribes, all tongues, all nations. That's what awaits. That's what awaits. And how we treat image bearers now is important because they'll be the ones we're standing beside. So when we welcome the sojourner, so we care for the stranger, we show hospitality to the foreigner, because those are the ones who will be standing with us when Christ returns. I want to leave us with just this vision of Revelation. It says this after this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribe, all peoples, all languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with white with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders, and four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped, saying, Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving, honor, and power might and might be to our God forever and ever. See, that that's where the story's headed. That's where it's gonna end. And so my hope for us is our posture now will ref reflect the kingdom that we're headed towards. Let me pray. Lord, we thank you for just your scripture, your word. God, we thank you for your heart. Lord, this is um not an easy conversation, not an easy topic. And Lord, there's uh yeah, there's a there's a lot, Lord, that's layered in this, Lord, and and and yet, Lord, I just pray you would give us discernment, Lord, and how to how to just walk, Lord, in in this conversation, Lord, how to just really recognize and examine, Lord, things that are reflective of you and maybe things that are not reflective of your heart, God. Uh we pray for pray for the leaders of this this particular country we live in, God. And we pray that you would God just bring about um direction for order and decency, God. That those things can be held together, Lord. Um we just ask, God, that you would uh you would provide that, Lord. And uh Jesus, we thank you for inviting us into relationship with you, God, that it's it's through Christ alone we are we're once the stranger, once the sojourner, we're welcome to be into this kingdom, given a new identity of sons and daughters. So we pray that we can respond from that identity this morning. And we ask this in your name, Jesus, amen.