Living with Hope in a Chaotic World

The world often feels uncertain, divided, and increasingly hostile to biblical faith. In this message from 1 Peter 1, Pastor Chris Teien explains why Christians can live with confident hope, even in difficult times, because our security rests in Jesus Christ and His unchanging promises.

Followers of Jesus have never been promised an easy life, but they have been promised an eternal hope. As we remember who we are in Christ, rejoice in the living hope of the resurrection, trust God through life's trials, and keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, we can faithfully stand firm no matter what happens around us.

In This Message: 

1. Remember Who You Are in Christ

Your identity is not determined by your circumstances, your culture, or the opinions of others. God has chosen you, redeemed you, and called you to belong to Him. (1 Peter 1:1-2)

2. Rejoice in Your Living Hope

Because Jesus Christ rose from the dead, believers have an eternal inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. Our hope is secure because it rests on the finished work of Christ. (1 Peter 1:3-5)

3. Trust God Through Life's Trials

God uses suffering and hardship to strengthen our faith and prepare us for His eternal purposes. Even difficult seasons become opportunities for spiritual growth and greater dependence upon Him. (1 Peter 1:6-9)

4. Love and Trust Jesus Even Though You Cannot See Him

Faith is built on the trustworthy promises of God, not on visible circumstances. As we continue to trust Christ, He fills our lives with lasting joy and confident hope. (1 Peter 1:8-9)

Takeaway

Don't allow a chaotic world to steal your confidence in Christ. Remember who you are, hold tightly to the living hope of the gospel, and faithfully follow Jesus until the day you see Him face to face.

Illustrations

• The swinging pendulum of a grandfather clock illustrates how cultures continually change while God's truth remains constant.

• Changing attitudes toward Christianity in Western culture remind believers that faithfulness has never depended upon cultural approval.

• Communion points believers back to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the unshakable foundation of our hope.

Key Quotes

"Christian hope is not wishful thinking. It is confident trust in God's promises."

"You may not be able to change the world around you, but you can faithfully live for Christ in it."

"Our hope is secure because Jesus Christ is alive."

Search Topics

1 Peter 1, Christian hope, living hope, persecution, suffering, trials, resurrection, Christian living, discipleship, Pastor Chris Teien

Full Episode & Transcript:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2285086/episodes/17959813

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Helping you apply God's Word and follow Jesus in everyday life. Learn more at ChrisTeien.com and Rockwell.church  Find episode transcripts at Well.faith 

Transcript

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Chris T 0:16

First Peter, out of the NIV, chapter one, verse one to nine. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God's elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood. Grace and peace be yours in abundance. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith, of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him, and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. So that is the passage that I wanted to look at. And I had chosen that passage before Charlie Kirk was assassinated, before we started to think more and more about religious persecution, before we were even thinking about all of the different things that are going on in our society. On one hand, there's been a constant stream of religious persecution around the world, but even here, it used to be a guaranteed thing that a kid could bring a Bible to school and pray in school, and so now kids are questioned even more. The Christian lawyers get to work though and sometimes help defend their freedoms, their rights to do that. And so it comes in waves. An old pastor told me that culture is like an old grandfather clock, actually. In his house, he had one. And the pendulum swings one way and then it swings back the other way. So as society gets too loose, too liberal, too crazy, people are like, hey, this isn't working, this isn't good, don't like it, and then it will start to swing back the other way and start to become more and more conservative again. And then once it goes this way, then eventually it will go back the other way. And wouldn't it be great if people just stayed true to the things of God? But I don't know what types of difficulty you've been experiencing or thinking about. I do know that it is easy as people get older to remember the good old days. And I'm sure that not everything was good about the old days, but there was a time when uh our society basically pursued Christian values, held those up. No one had a problem with the Ten Commandments being in a school. We had blue laws actually that kept certain businesses closed on Sunday so that people would worship. They didn't have sports practice, they didn't have sports games on Sundays, they didn't have sports practice on church night. Now it's wide open. Now everybody is doing whatever. And when you drive to church, maybe you see games on the field going on when most people would have church. And so in the old days, it was just a cultural thing. It was a norm that many people went to church. A lot of people went to church for the right reason because they loved Jesus and came to worship. Somewhat because it was a social thing, and they thought that it would be good for them to be there because it helped them in business, it helped them in the community, it helped them in every way. Now that's changing. And so Christians are often looked down upon, seen as naive, sometimes misrepresented as to what we believe, and they try to get us to conform to the ways of the world, get us to conform in the way that we believe. So when it comes to things like gender versus biblical marriage and biblical sexuality of one man and one woman and the genders and everything, if you loudly proclaim that, you might lose your opportunity to adopt a child. You might lose your opportunity to get a job, you might lose your opportunity to become a leader in your organization. And so things have really changed. The world has gotten to be quite chaotic. And what's even more difficult is because I think we're able to see the news all around the world, if there's an earthquake on the other side of the world, we can be alerted immediately and know all the tragedy that's going on the other end of the world. And so we can see all this stuff. And then to add to that, not only can we see it, but now we have people that put out videos for money on things like YouTube and things where when uh they post their stuff, it might not really be 100% accurate. The information may be skewed, they might be trying to give you some kind of fascinating tale to get you to watch, to get you to click. And so that sometimes makes the world seem even more chaotic. But it is obvious, it is true, that all of the big nations of the world appear to be rattling their sabers, ready to start some kind of war. And we could destroy ourselves so quickly with all the bombs and technology and everything. But I believe that the Lord is going to hold everything together until it's his time. He's held the things together in the past, and I trust that he will continue to hold them together. So, how should we live our lives then? How should we live our lives when we feel that we're not our faith isn't valued, and sometimes we feel lonely, like we feel like we're the only Christ follower in the workplace or in the neighborhood, or the only one in the school. And I'm sure there's more than just you. If you were to step up and be bold for your faith, maybe you would find out who those other people are. But division. Sometimes our families are divided over our faith. Sometimes when we stand strong for our faith, people try to sue us for what we stand for. Sometimes we're persecuted for our faith. Jesus said that we would be persecuted because he was persecuted. And this is the background of what Peter was writing to these churches that were all spread out, these people that were a lot of them being persecuted for their faith. They weren't from the big city where the big church was, where there was a big group to get together. They felt that they were all alone, they felt persecuted. Peter opens his letter by identifying himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ. Peter lived it. He was with Jesus, he tried to walk on water, he did fail Jesus, he denied Jesus, but he was forgiven. And then he came back and in boldness preached a great sermon that you can read about in the book of Acts, where thousands of people responded and got saved. And so Peter has lived this life. And some wonder if Peter actually wrote this, but it appears that he wrote it through, someone else will talk about that in another week, to get help, to write it clearly, but it's still inspired by and guided by the Holy Spirit to give us what we need to know. But he's lived through fear, failure, forgiveness, and faithful leadership. By the time he writes this letter, around AD 62 to 64, he's in Rome, which he symbolically calls Babylon. And the Roman Empire Nero hadn't officially started persecuting Christians yet, but suspicions were riding. So when he writes to these cities, uh Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, regions in modern-day Turkey, they were mostly Gentile Christians living as minorities in pagan cities. They were misunderstood, they were misrepresented, and they were socially vulnerable. And so Peter wanted to encourage these people. Peter wanted to encourage the persecuted church. Peter wanted to encourage those people who felt lonely because they were living for Christ and they didn't feel like anybody else was. Maybe that's you today. Maybe you feel the same way. But so strange that you can be in a crowd of thousands of people and still feel lonely. So I changed schools a lot when I was a kid. My parents moved a lot. But I've been to little schools. One school was only like 232 kids, kindergarten through 12th grade. One high school I went to had 2,600 students, 9th through 12th grade. And you can be surrounded by 2,600 students and still feel lonely. You can be surrounded by 232 students and every classroom is in the same. You just, every class is in the same room and still have conflicts among your classmates and things like that. But Peter is writing to those how to have confident hope in a chaotic world. You might not be able to change everything in the world, but you can live for Jesus through it. You can stand strong as a pillar through it. You can make a difference to those people who are around you. You can stand strong for your faith and try to find anybody that God puts in your path to help them to learn about Jesus and to grow in the Christian faith, to help disciple them. So I strongly believe that the Holy Spirit is actually in charge of the discipling program and he can use all of us in different ways to invest into the lives of people. As a church, we want to make disciples. Sometimes we get books on discipleship, and we say if you do these books and you go through this course of study, when it's done, then you're discipled. But actually, a true disciple is a follower of Jesus who learns how to live for Jesus and learns Jesus' ways and then leads someone to Christ and teaches that person how to live as a disciple, live Jesus' ways, that then that person they're investing in leads someone to Christ and trains up that person, and then I would say that person is truly a disciple. Or when you see those multiple generations. And sometimes you have a process, you have a plan, you have a resource that you like to use. And when it's done, then you don't say, Oh, congratulations, you're done. You pass them off to the next person where they can learn a new skill, where they can do a new thing. You encourage them, you find out what their difficulties are, and you do everything that you can to help keep them moving forward. There'll be spiritual difficulty, there'll be all sorts of um spiritual attacks that come their way, but you do everything that you can to keep them moving forward. And that's what Peter is trying to do in this book. That's what Peter is trying to do for these scattered, persecuted Christians. And I think it will be exciting to go through 1 Peter because I only get 52 weeks, 52 Sundays a year. I was looking at it, and I don't think I'm gonna go through every verse and every chapter. I think that's something that's better for a Bible study, but I'm going to skim through 1 Peter and try to bring you messages that are practical and life and transformational. So that would be good. So the first point is to remember who you are, to remember who you are. So Paul remembered in the Peter in the beginning of this remembered who he was. And so, as I already read, he says, I'm Peter, I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ, and then he writes it to God's elect. And then he says that these people have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God, the sanctifying work of the Spirit. And chosen. When you think about who you are, when you think about do you really matter as far as church, as far as Christ, as far as the things of this world, do you really matter? You don't have to have a great big social status. You don't have to be well-known. You don't have to be a person of means. You can be confident and content that if you are a Christ follower, if Jesus Christ is in your life, that you have been chosen. You were picked, God chose you, and I could actually just stop right here and talk about that word for the rest of the message. And I think I will do that in the future. I was actually thinking that'd be a pretty good Christian Christmas Eve message to talk about being chosen, but to be chosen, that wasn't random. God knows you, God cares about you, and God knows these people who are being persecuted, these people who are scattered, he knows them, and he knows that they might go through some hard things, but he also knows that he is their God and that he is reliable and he is trustworthy, and that in Christ, we are in him. We have been chosen to be on the team. You remember when you were a kid and people would pick teams? And I just mentioned that my parents moved a lot. Well, because I seemed like I went to a lot of different schools, a lot of the new being the new kid in the school often. So you'd have people pick teams, and it was always, I don't know, I always felt bad when I got picked last after the girl that couldn't do anything. It made me feel bad. And so hopefully as time went on, maybe I was chosen more, but it was all conditional. I don't know you, you're not my friend, you're not that great at kickball, whatever. But maybe you're not that great. Maybe you're not a perfect person, maybe you don't live a sinless life. But God has chosen you. God has chosen you, God is working in your life, God is working to sanctify you and to move you through. Sometimes we pick where we live. It seems like God works behind the scenes, but sometimes we're born into a certain place and we decide to stay there. We don't venture off anywhere. Or sometimes we do venture off somewhere for a job or for an education or whatever, and we meet some people and we kind of get stuck and we wonder, you know, can God really use me here? I should probably be somewhere else. God can use me if I were to move. God can use me if I were to get this education, God can use me in the future. And we always put our lives on hold. But God can use you now where you are, bloom where you're planted. God can use you with the people around you. Just start praying that God would open your eyes to see who you can connect with, who you can invest with, invest in who you can serve with and what you can do. Those are great things. But your identity begins not with what you've done, but what God has done. He set his love on you before the foundation of the world that gives you security. No circumstances can shake. So to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood, grace and peace be yours in abundance. Some people see that obedience, and they're like, oh, that doesn't sound fun. It doesn't sound fun. I want to do my own thing. But actually, when you are obedient to the things of the Lord, when you live the way that he has planned, designed, and given us in his word, it leads to hope, it leads to blessing, it leads to a fruitful life. The kind of life that when you get to the very end of it, you look back on it and you say, Maybe I wasn't perfect, but Jesus was faithful all the way. What a blessing it is that I was chosen and saved. All right, number two, praising God for a living hope. Praising God for a living hope. Again, in the verse, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in his great mercy, he's given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Wouldn't it be terrible if Jesus just died on the cross and then we heard that he died for our sins and that was the sacrifice, and but we had no connection. It was a religion, and we did the rules, we did the thing, but we didn't. We knew there was this God that wasn't personable, that wasn't connectable, and we did whatever we did because we were trying to do the right thing, living the moral law, doing the works because we wanted to be seen right with God. But he was unpredictable, he was unknowable, but that's not what we got. We got Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, where we like to say we can have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, who is alive, who cares, who is coming back for us again someday, and we worship for that, we worship for that, and this inheritance, this thing that God has for us, these rewards that He has for us, they are not here. We could lose stuff, stuff rusts away, stuff is destroyed by fire, stuff can be stolen, all of these things, but our inheritance is kept in heaven for us for a future day. And those are so many wonderful things to look forward to and so many ways to trust the Lord. So who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time? And so the last days are actually any time from the time Jesus ascended into heaven until now. But Jesus could return at any time. The whole chapters of history could change at any time when Jesus comes back. And so when we receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are saved, but we will truly experience our salvation when we die in this life and we go to be with Jesus, or when we're raptured away. When all of that happens, we will truly experience that salvation. And that is the hope that gets us through. That is the encouragement that gets us through that says no matter how bad it is today, no matter how bad the things are that you're going through, your health problems, your financial problems, your job problems, um, all those different things. That someday heaven. And it's also a reminder that this isn't heaven. So there is a much better day ahead for those who believe in Jesus Christ. And we praise God for it. We praise God that we've been given a new birth through God's mercy and our new identity, that we've been given a living hope through Christ's resurrection. That's our new outlook. And we've been promised a secure inheritance kept by God's power. That's our guaranteed future. Those things are very exciting. Number three, we need to rejoice in trials that refine our faith, to rejoice in trials that refine our faith. Would you rather go through this life untouched by God, just doing your own thing, never going through a difficulty, never having any type of strength-building resistance, never having any tests of character or faith and this is truth to this life and never be who you could have become? Or would you like God to intervene in your life and uh to test you and to train you and to refine your faith and to strengthen your faith as you carry burdens and you're faithful, as you do the right things, even when society or family or people push against you? Would you rather be untouched, or would you rather have God's super spiritual plan that helps you to become more for Jesus to refine your faith and to refine your usefulness? Unless you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief and all kinds of troubles. Sometimes God's not the author of the difficulty, but sometimes God uses the difficulties to help you to gain a stronger faith, to help you, to have a stronger testimony, to help you, to show compassion to other people who have gone through the same things. I've talked to many people who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and it totally changed their life. All of a sudden they weren't thinking about, oh, I have all these days. It doesn't matter. I can do whatever I want. I got all the time in the world. So all of a sudden they're thinking about I don't have any time at all. I gotta stay focused, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. And I remember some years back, there were two old guys that came to the prayer meeting every week, and so they both said that they were given diagnosed, they were diagnosed with terminal illnesses, that they were supposed to be dead, but God had them on extended play, they were still alive and they were being faithful to serve them every day because it was such a gift that while they thought that they were gonna die, they did not, and God kept them around, and they that might be the thing that you need for a turnaround. If God might get in the way of something, if you might go through some difficulty, maybe you'll lose your job and you'll get a better job. And it wasn't the job you even expected. And you'll look back and you'll go, I don't, we were so afraid, we didn't know what was gonna happen. But then when you look back, you'll be like, I see how God worked in that, I see what God did, what I thought was gonna be terrible, God used for good. So those trials are real, they're scary, they're difficult. You stay awake at night thinking about what's gonna happen to me, how are we gonna make it? But then God comes through, and I strongly encourage you to write down those things so that you'll remember them. Maybe you can share them with the people that you're discipling or your kids or grandkids, those things of God that He has done in your life. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith of greater worth than gold may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. To praise the Lord, to thank him for all that he's done, all that he's done. Doing all that he's gonna do. I hope that you spend all eternity praising Jesus for saving you, for changing you, for making you who you are today. I often like to think about who would I be today if Christ hadn't come into my life? What kind of person would I be? How much has Jesus changed my life? Those things are good. And number four, we need to love and trust Jesus even though we don't see him. Love and trust Jesus without seeing him. It would be so much easier to worship if we could see Jesus, if we could be around Jesus, if he would sit in the room with us. And but the faith that we are called to is a faith of trust. I have not seen Jesus, but I have experienced him. I have experienced answers to prayer. I've experienced peace. All these different things. The Spirit testifies within me that I'm truly a child of God, and those are good things, though you have not seen Jesus. So Peter actually saw Jesus. So he's writing to these people who were dispersed, and probably most of them hadn't seen Jesus, had heard of Jesus. They've heard Jesus ascended into heaven. They've heard all this, but they have not seen him. And they still love him. And even though they don't see him now, they still believe in him or are filled with inexpressible and glorious joy. And then it says that you're receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. So to follow Jesus, because he saves, to follow Jesus, because there is just something about life in Christ that is so much more exciting than just living life on our own, doing worldly things, doing things on our own, to trust Jesus, to pursue faith, to look for opportunities to serve the Lord and to encourage one another and build each other up. So true hope produces love for Christ, faith in Christ, and joy in Christ. We love him even though we haven't seen him. We trust him even now, even now, unseen, and we rejoice with the joy that the world can't explain, rooted in salvation that we have received in the glory that's still yet to come. So I'm not gonna talk about the next two verses because now it's time for the next verses 10 through 13. But I will give you the what would go in the slot there, just in case you can't leave here without filling out the rest of that outline. You would just be so bothered that there were two empty blanks. So number five, stand in awe of God's salvation plan. And six, set your hope fully on his return. So we can pick that up later. But Christian hope is not wishful thinking, it's a secure trust in God's future grace. So now we come to communion. Now we come to communion, and in front of you or around you are these communion cups, where we have the bread on the bottom here and the juice on the top. So the blue ones that say gluten-free are obviously gluten-free, and the ones that are white and normal are obviously that. But we come to communion time, and communion time is for everybody who has personally received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, who are in faith. So if we were to skip ahead to 1 Peter 1 18, it says for you, it's not on the screen, for you know that it was not with perishable things, such as silver or gold, that you were redeemed from the empty way of life, handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. So everybody is invited to take communion with us that has received Jesus as their Lord and Savior. But we want to make sure that you take it in a worthy manner. So, what is a worthy manner? A worthy manner is that you are in Christ. It is a celebration for Christ followers, for believers in Christ. First Corinthians 11 27 says, Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves. So if you just think it's cracker and juice time, or you think it's just a meaningless ceremony, beware. Scripture calls out those who would take it in an unworthy manner. Some would say that an unworthy manner would be if you have unconfessed sin in your life. And the quick solution to that is maybe you should confess that sin right now in your seat before you take communion. Maybe it's time to recommit your life to the Lord. Maybe it's time to recommit yourself. If you've never received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, the plan of salvation is clear. We are saved from our sins. Romans 3.23 says, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Every person has broken God's law and failed to meet God's holy requirements, his holy standards. So we're all sinners by nature and by choice. Romans 6.23 says, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The consequence of sin is spiritual death and separation from God, but through Jesus, God offers eternal life as a free gift. Romans 5.8 says that God demonstrates his own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He didn't wait for us to clean ourselves up. He didn't make us do a bunch of things to earn our salvation. He gives it as a gift. He sent Jesus to die in our place while we were still sinners. And even though that is 2,000 years ago, that still is credited to our account to wipe away our sin debt and give us Christ's righteousness. So what do we do? How do we respond? Romans 10 9 says, if you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it's with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it's with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. So salvation happens when a person truly believes in their heart and confesses openly that Jesus is Lord. So it's personal trust, not just intellectual ascent. Romans 10 13 says, Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And that's why I always encourage people, though it's not the prayer, the words of a prayer that save you, that prayer is communicating with the Lord your will, your desire. And maybe you will acknowledge in your prayer that you are a sinner in need of salvation, and that you want to turn from your wicked ways and pursue Jesus' ways, that you want to become a Christ follower and live his way. And then if you do that, you are assured that you are in Christ. First John 5 11. This is the testimony. God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his son. Whoever has the Son has life. Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you that believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. So where does that leave you? Do you know Jesus? Do you know for sure that you have that eternal life? If you don't, maybe you could pray something like this. God, I acknowledge that I'm a sinner and need to be forgiven of these sins, and there's nothing that I can do on my own. And I acknowledge that I believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross and that he paid for our sins on the cross and then he rose again, and that he ascended into heaven, and that by repenting of my sin and asking Christ to forgive me and to come into my life, that I will be saved. And Jesus, I want to do that now. In Jesus' name. Maybe you know this, and maybe you are a Christ follower. Maybe it's time for you to recommit. Maybe it's time for you to recommit your life to Christ. So the communion passage that we're all familiar with, Paul writes, For I pass on to you what I received from the Lord Himself on the night when he was betrayed. The Lord Jesus took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. And then he broke it in pieces and said, This is my body which is given for you. Do this to remember me. In the same way he took the cup of wine after supper, saying, This cup is a new covenant between God and his people, an agreement confirmed with my blood. Do this to remember me, as often as you drink it. For every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are announcing the Lord's death until he comes. So I'm going to show a video. It's only like a minute long. Maybe you'll watch the video, or maybe you will confess anyone's sin. Maybe you'll recommit your life to Christ. But and then after that, there'll be like a minute of silence for you to pray. You can always continue this on, continue on the conversation with the Lord when we're done here. But let me show the video about communion, and then we'll have a minute of or so, and then I'll come back up.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

We remember the sacrifice of our Savior, the forfeiture of life, so we could be free from death. We remember his broken body, bruised and beaten for our transgressions. The bloodshed to cleanse the crimson stain sin had left behind. We remember the simple truth that God loved us so much, he gave his only son. Today we remember, today we gather at the cross.

Chris T 32:23

That you put it in the pages of scripture is something that we were to do often, that it is a visual sensory reminder that you gave your body and shed your blood on the cross for our sins to be forgiven, that it wasn't anything that we deserved. The fact that you chose us isn't anything that we deserved, but we celebrate that. We celebrate that we are known by you, known by name. We celebrate that we have an eternal home in you. We celebrate that you want to be involved in our lives and make us better, make us more effective, make our lives worthy of eternal reward if we would only let you. So we commit that. We commit ourselves to you. We thank you for shedding your blood. We thank you for your body being pierced for our transgressions. We know that without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins. And while they sacrificed lambs in the Old Testament, you were the ultimate sacrificial lamb. And we thank you that it was a once-for-all sacrifice that doesn't need to happen again and again, because your atonement was satisfactory. So, Jesus, we thank you. Now we're going to take this. We're going to eat the body of Christ given for you and me. And the blood of Christ, which covers all of our sins. Though our sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. We take this and we drink. Jesus, we look forward to your return. We pray that you would catch us doing something good. When we're standing around the heavenly water cooler, Jesus, we pray that we would be able to report that we were doing something to build your kingdom, something to rescue people from darkness and sin and hell, that you would do great things for us, through us, with us, to us, so that we can be a blessing to others. In Jesus' name. Amen.