Transition/transition4l

Let's then take a look at the cross from this little bit different platform And what I kind of hinted at it in the last session By the way, if you didn't get any of these they're gonna be up here afterwards too If you want to get some of those we'll use it tomorrow a little bit to talk to you I'll explain it at the end of this fire remember We'll actually leave you today because the part we're gonna share on the cross now We'll actually leave you at a pretty difficult moment quite honestly Some of us who are hanging around having pizza may talk some further talk it out a bit more, but It will at least give you some things to ruminate on and I won't have time for Q&A today, but tomorrow morning I'll try and start with what do you want to talk about from that that you process overnight So if I forget that in the morning You could remind me because I'm not really necessarily following a script here So let's talk about then the cross as punishment or the cross is cure now I'm gonna concede right out of the box that most of the language of The Old Testament that talks about the cross is the language of punishment The chastisement of our peace fell upon him the view of wrath from the Old Testament is very much a God of vengeance Very much. That's how we Understand it I think when you go back and read the Old Testament do the grid of the new and some of the things We share this weekend. I think you'll find a whole different God in the Old Testament than the one that that religion embellishes from there Religion for this to survive. This is among all the other things we said. It's a lot of work It's incredibly frustrating and if you're just a spectator in religion, it's incredibly boring. I Think religion needs a vengeful God to survive You've got to have an angry God who's willing to do things worse to you than church the old way of looking to to get you to endure it and Hell makes a pretty good case for that, you know, this is This is not as bad as hell. So we're gonna just Sit through this for a couple hours a week, then we're good and that's just worth doing worth giving God his place You know, so a lot of the language of the Old Covenant Does play up the punishment aspect of it? I think from our side of it if you're talking about how I look at the cross You could really the punishment thing as I said would work if that was you know, God's Needed justice. He executes it on the Sun Pun intended. I don't have to get what I deserve and from our standpoint. It looks like that But I also remember everything in the Old Covenant is written through this grid of shame Hebrews 9 and 10 the Old Covenant and its sacrifices could never make the worshiper Perfect and conscience so this grid of shame that makes me feel unworthy that when God's presence gets near me I feel suffocated in my sinfulness and fallenness and I deserve to die and Abraham stretched out before the throne or Hosea saying what shall I give the food of my body for the sin of my soul? That's all honest reflections of the shame induced life that the fall has brought and So yes when when you are overwhelmed with shame punishment Executed against the wrong person an innocent victim takes my place on the cross. That's great news Except it leaves you with what is God all about I Mean how did God set up a universe where the only way it could work is? Wacking and killing and vengeance, but I I was in a church Cathedral in Albee, France a number of years ago And I was traveling through the southern regions of France is with the in my father's vineyard book Which they translated into French and I was driving to speak at this one group of folks and as we're driving through the countryside I See this cathedral standing in the middle of what I thought was a wheat field I mean I see a huge cathedral in the middle of nowhere, and I said what is that? He says cathedral. I said where is that he sits downtown Albee, France How big is Albee hundred thousand people I? Couldn't even see a town this cathedral is a hundred yards high It's 300 yards long It's a hundred yards wide. It's huge and Thing what is this this village have this thing for so we went downtown and tell me start hitting the city It was a long ways to get downtown to where the cathedral finally was I'm telling you I could when I first saw the cathedral. I saw no evidence of a city and We're standing dwarfed by this thing and you we took a tour of it It is the only painted ceiling cathedral outside of Italy. It's just like the Sistine Chapel It's that whole 300 yards across the roof, which is a hundred yards in the air. You can't even see it I mean in there with binoculars. Oh, what is up there? It's the whole history of the Bible from Adam and Eve in the garden in the very back all the way through Old Testament history New Testament history and then The wall which now this wall how big is this wall in front of the behind the altar It's a hundred yards wide by a hundred yards tall. Okay, that's how big that wall is You know what's on that wall? the last judgment seat of Christ on That wall is Jesus standing on his throne sending the damned to hell And in the bottom of that fresco across the whole bottom of the behind this is what's right behind the altar This is what every worshiper who goes to it's still a functioning cathedral Every where's we're sits there and across the bottom in 17 foot high panels. That's how high these bottom panels are 17 feet Hi, are how each of the seven deadly sins are punished in hell and It's gruesome. It's you know the greedy. I don't remember mom or the greedy people were tied up in chains by devils and they were pouring molten gold down their throats and they were screaming in anguish and Gluttony with a whole nother thing and never just went on and on he just said there. This is what Rome Wants you to think about on a Sunday morning when you come to worship Because you need something worse to survive Beneath that entire cathedral in the bottom story beneath the actual Cathedral part is a prison Dungeon hundred yards wide 300 yards long Cathedral was built because there's a group of Albie Jensen's we don't know what they believed other than all Rome says of them is that they were anti-papists They decided we don't need to follow the Pope to follow Christ the church Built the cathedral in Albie France in 1200 1200 to 1350 150 years to build the cathedral as They're building that cathedral in Albie France. They're arresting people who are not submitted to the Pope They're torturing them in hopes of getting them to swear allegiance to the Pope Over the course of building that cathedral and using the dungeon in the basement while they were building the cathedral 60,000 Albie Jensen's were slaughtered For not submitting their lives to Pope Now your religion is pretty bad if that's how you have to sustain it Here people probably just like us who said you know what I don't need all that It's Jesus. I want to follow and if you got a good reading in the New Testament you come out going. It's Jesus. I want to follow They were killed and the imagery they wanted invoke in the minds of people to this day is Here's what it's at the end of the age. Here's what you're gonna suffer if you don't get it right here So the language of the old covenant as we look toward the new is through the grid of that shame that that stuff is meant to Motivate I said everything in our world revolves around shame when I talk about shame-based behaviors I'm not just talking about Adam and Eve feeling naked and hiding in the bushes. That's a part of it Pity parties is definitely a part of shame. You know, I'm worthless. God doesn't love me. I'm just nothing. Yeah, that's part of shame Boasting is part of shame boasting is the other side of shame Read most Christian magnacies today the largest this the most that it's all competitive Competitive is the result of shame-based behaviors Gossip is a shame-based behavior. The reason people gossip is because we'll feel better about ourselves if we'll get together and tear down Lindsay Then we feel better about us gossip is all about competitive righteous religion is all about competition Because anybody who's remember how even Paul talked about his own religion Circumcised the eighth day as to the law found falls as to zeal for the as to zeal a persecutor of the church He's establishing his credential as that anybody's got a reason to boast I far more boasting is always competitive boasting always uses the language of larger bigger Whatever or largest biggest Comparatives and superlatives because religion is all about competing When people ask me I'm hanging out with different groups of people Particularly more organized groups of people than you guys are very disorganized group of people That's we don't all relate to each other in any formal way But I'm with more organized groups of that I often get asked as I'm leaving What do you think of our groups you think our group was healthy? I think it was relational you think it was this and I said that I'm gonna try to answer that question I wasn't among you to judge you to sort that out. So I said but you can answer it this way quite easily What happens more in your life together as a people does gossip happen more or confession happen more? Confession happen. I don't mean the enforced confession of people who are trying to manipulate folks. Yeah, we've gotten to your head I Mean just the confession of people live open and honest lives They're not trying to be better than they are they're not trying to fake a righteousness They don't have if the people as you live together. Is it more authentic and open or is it more gossip based? Because we're really only honest about each other when each other is not in the room And that usually tells me all I need to know about a group of people I think people understand the cross are very confessional and I don't mean they're sitting around confessing their sins to each other I don't mean that I just mean that they don't live fake lives. They don't try to be what they're not Don't try to be any better than they are They don't try to be any further down the road than they are but in religious settings There's always a competition you feel it just walking in a group of people who's most spiritual who's less spiritual Most spiritual just beyond the worship team less spiritual has to work in the nursery, you know, and it's just Because we'll let anybody work in the nursery But on stage, you know, you got to be at a certain level for that and the whole idea of This pecking order of spirituality all of that relates to this same sense of shame. In fact religion also this about religion Rebellion is a shame avoidance system This ignore your shame do whatever feels good and you try and convince everybody You're okay no matter what you're doing because shame just a fabrication of religion. That's what you that's what rebellious people deal with shame Religion is a shame management system We try and take people's sense of shame. They feel bad. They don't feel like they belong and we're gonna manipulate that shame to make them act better So we say things like man if you miss this you're missing the last best great thing. God's doing on the earth shame based God yeah, if you don't do this God's not going to shame based every bit of marketing from Madison Avenue Is shame based you're not driving the right car. You're not wearing the right clothes not wearing the right scent You're not what you know, whatever. It's just It's shame based if you get it right you get with the in-crowd if you it's all based on our sense of not feeling like we belong And then rewards in a shame management system if the more you conform the more reward you get The nicer people are to you the more authority you can have the you know all that and the less you conform We use shame then as a weapon. So we want to shun people make them feel ashamed We you'll pair the whole you have your shame to yourself shame shame shame is a wonderful way to manipulate people because we all have it If you haven't been to the cross if you don't have a revelation of the cross you are so easily manipulated by your sense of shame and When you're a good preacher in religion You're very effective at manipulating people shame. How do I know? I've done it. I Know how to do it. I know how to do it with you I can make you go away from this weekend thing and you have the most incredibly cathartic experience in the world By just manipulating your sense of shame to get you to do some outrageous things And you would go away feeling pretty holy at the end of it unless you've been to the cross in which case You'd walk out here feeling pretty manipulated because shame is just it's there And the only way to deal with shame and a shame management system is you've got to be better than the people around you Empirically I know there's nothing even when I was a good little Pharisee. I knew that in my honest moments I was not righteous enough to earn anything from God How much Bible reading is enough? How much sharing with the lost is enough if you're gonna get on that if you Play that game That was a story told as some guy comes into heaven and he's a cleric from some institution And he meets him at the gate and Peter says well, hi, this is well. I'm fine. Do I get in appears? I don't know how many points you got He's how many points so I had he said yeah many points. Yeah, so I don't know. I know I had that points Oh, yeah, you got a point points are important. He said well, like how many points I do anything we need a hundred points to get in 100 points. He said well, let me think I Worked at the soup kitchen for 20 years helping people with that that and pierces off. Yeah I'll give you a point for that The point like a point for year. No, I just give you a point point I was a pastor for 25 years I'll give you another point. Yeah, I'll give you another point So he said I try to think of everything he can to get points and he just can't get enough points And pretty soon he knows this guy. He knows a businessman walking by. Oh, I beat I do is I'm doing great He walks on it. He says what that guy points pizza. Oh, that guy. He's not playing this game Great You're not playing unless you like that. You thought I was going a whole different way with that in your word. Oh, no, dang Hi, it was grace coming in and that's how in the hallway going out. No He's not playing that game. I love that When you're trying to compete for your sense of righteousness or worth or you're trying to earn it through self-effort Your most honest moment, you know, you're not doing enough to measure up. You just not So the only way to make it work is for me, you just hope God grades on the bell curve. Remember the bell curve So I don't know that I'm righteous enough But as long as I read my Bible more than 90% of the rest of you, I'm going to be okay I don't know how much sharing the gospel really I have to do but as long as I'm doing more than 90% Of the rest of you I'm going and I think the thought process was really like that It's comparative because in our honest moments, we know none of us measure up So I just got to be better than most of the rest of the folks. I know It's what makes body life competitive from the very beginning. I have a vested interest in embellishing your flesh and denigrating mine I have a vested interest in embellishing my good points and Disarming yours. It's weird, isn't it? Because you can't get there that way So undermines relationship, so I will say there's a lot in the in scripture Particularly the old covenant that looks toward the cross as punishment because from some sense that it looks like that But the new testament begins to paint a very different view of this cross from God's perspective Not ours not us needing an innocent victim to satisfy justice But a God who is the sacrifice himself not a God who needs it But a God who is it? Some of the language let's look at second Corinthians chapter 4 because I Excuse me second Corinthians chapter 5 and about verse 20. Oh goodness know about verse 14 This is this is Paul. You know a lot about Corinthians This is Paul's letter to this to the Corinthians the second one is Noted as one of Paul's most personal letters He's got a group of folks going off-track to some false leaders that are taken over and as Paul writes And we spent a number of months or years perhaps with these Corinthians He's writing the most intensely personal gospel Epistle that he writes it's down to his core Motivations and one of those we see reflected in verse 14 for Christ's love compels us The whole standard of Paul's life was based around man. I am loved. It's not even his love for Christ That's not what's compelling him. I'm doing this to show Jesus. I love him. That's not what he's saying He says it's his love for me that compels me remember his conversion Paul you'll see called Saul at the time You'll some have been laudan of his day on his way to Damascus to whack more Christians God knocks him off his horse, right? Remember not so much blinds him. He's in the dirt and The voice booming from Jesus Saul Saul. Why are you persecuting me? Saul's response is who are you Lord? You gotta get this moment. He's in the dirt He's this he's come face to face with the power of the universe and he didn't know what was before he knows it now He's got no doubt. He's face to face with Lord, but he doesn't have any idea who that Lord is It's not that God he'd been serving Who are you Lord? And you know you got to be thinking if you're out there whacking Jesus people You got to think his next thought inside is and please don't say Jesus Be Confucius be Buddha be anybody Don't be Jesus and the next words are I'm Jesus whom you're pursuing if you're Paul Who serves the God that wax people who disagree with him? What are you expecting to see in the eyes of the God whose followers you've just been killing what? Give me some language Punishment wrath Vengeance Payback you I mean he looks up at that out of his blind eyes and all that looking into Was he expecting to see in the eyes of that voice? But all the things we just said vengeance and what do you expect to happen to him on that road? You're on the wrong team. You've been playing for the wrong team for a long time. You've been killing people I love what do you expect to see all that we just said? What did he see? Love and repented yet Religion teaches you you get love when you repent Jesus ceases you repent when you're loved You will turn around You don't repent to earn love Paul hasn't repented yet, and he finds in Jesus's eyes this affection this love the invitation I want to send you around the whole world share my gospel with people Have you doing what you've been killing people for it's just an amazing moment But as Paul talks about that through the course of oh he shares it four or five times in acts He shares it some of his epistles it comes up every time it's man. Now. We know loved by this I was loved by the one guy who deserved to whack me in the dirt Who would have been fully justified to nail my hide do a wall? He invited me to be part of his kingdom. It's the love of Christ that compels me Because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died And he died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves But for him who died for them and was raised again So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view though We once regarded Christ in this way. We do so no longer if anyone is in Christ He is a new creation the old has gone the new has come did this verse ever make sense to you in religion? Isn't it another one of those versions you go? Well, okay, theologically that's true But we still wake up to the old Wayne the old whoever you live with You still struggle with sin, and you know, I mean all things have become to nothing's become new And I'm working hard to try and make things look like they're coming new and Paul just I thought all things became new what became you Your nature your life in Christ your being in him all things become new does that mean Wayne's new in some sense Yeah, in some other sense it means all Wayne's broken the still needs to be touched by the king Forgiven is easy transformation stuff I mean if you fail me if somebody hurts me here, can I forgive you without exacting punishment Yeah, in fact, I'm kind of asked to do that Peter says Jesus how much time my brother's bugging me how many times I forgive him and seven times Peter thinks he's being generous The answer is now 70 times Now we're putting in the realm of a year of jubilee the whole Spiritual reality of jubilee, which is no debts carried over Everybody starts now and Jesus invoking that every day I miss an amazing thing, but You know we in religion gosh, I Guess I'm a new creature. I'm told them that we talk about being our standing in Christ versus, you know Sanctification which needs to change us some but it was not saying that here. You just it all became new all of a sudden I had new access to a new father and Everything became new even though as he talks about his old man still needing to be put to death the old man Need to be shaped and changed. We'll talk about that some more tomorrow And then he goes on to say this The old has gone the new has come all this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and then gave us the ministry of Reconciliation namely that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ Not counting men's sins against them You've got to really stretch that passage to make that only apply to believers That's how I've done it in the past. That's how you got you got you know what God's got counting Of course God's counting That's got sinners out there. They're sinning if they don't get it right. They're gonna go to hell Of course you go to hell for sins. That's what's in the book the books and sins are listed in there And if you don't get them forgiven or cleansed or whatever then But it just frankly says God was in Christ really speaking about Christ's time on the planet God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself namely not counting men's trespasses against them anymore and Women that includes you to That's wouldn't that be good news Because everybody in the world thinks God's counting we Christians most of all Well, he was just not counting You're people that you know coming around another New Year's and people are to prowl man I've told God a thousand times I never do this again New Year's come I'm still I'm 40 years now in the faith and still struggling with the same stuff. We're counting That's not counting in that great news And I loved y'all people God's not counting because we're counting We've been counting for each other. Well, I might not be the best, but you know, you're worse than me. So yeah That's not counting The language of reconciliation who mostly interpreted the cross in judicial terms. Have we not is reconciliation a judicial term It's not a judicial term Injustice issues you go to courts. There are winners and losers. There's not reconciliation I sat in jury duty a while back and a judge told me is he prepping us for service He says our jury system in America is the highest form of conflict resolution in the world And I would like to have taken him out back with the First Amendment and beat him over the head because it's not Last week I was in Iowa to school board meeting with 22 committee members half of them gay rights activists Half of them conservative evangelical believers some of those pastors They're fighting over an anti harassment policy for their district about which some want to include Sexual orientation and some don't want to include it and it's not required by law in Iowa. So it was a big fight Now you can take that puppy to court if you want and the courts will decide it for you And when the court decides that issue there are winners and there are losers. Am I right I? Walked in that room a week ago Wednesday night And I said to them we're done tonight when 90% of us agree on a policy And they all laugh because they're sitting there half on this side of the table half on that side of table They don't even like each other. They're the enemy. They've been screaming at each other in board meetings for the last three months They're going serious. I said that's serious We'll be done Public education is a shared treasure Shared treasure means it can't be Promoting my agenda against yours if it is it ceases to be a public school So how is it fair to our differences? And there's a whole lot that went on by the next night that start on Tuesday with them finished Wednesday night Wednesday night We voted out a policy 22 to 0 for that school district Now what happens in that room is called reconciliation Did anybody change their beliefs about homosexuality in the course of the meeting? No no one changed their views What we agreed to do was share the forum Let's make sure it's safe for every student period No matter what and they worked hard at writing a policy. I said we're going to share the district We're going to be fair. We're not looking for the district to prefer me over you So the district's not going to have gay pride parades. They're not going to have Christian pride parades That's not the school's responsibility. I Walk out of there not only has the as a town have an agreement something been fighting about for three months But there are also people who were mortal enemies Christian pastors the head of P flag parents for lesbians and gays And I watch after the meeting they're talking to each other walking out. There's a relationship that's begun That's reconciliation The language of the cross is the language of reconciliation. It's not justice It's not the advocate with the father. It's like, oh, okay. We'll have to let him in And it wasn't Jesus doing it behind God's back. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself The mistaken notion that at some point on the cross God had to turn his back on the Sun To which the Sun would cry out my God my God. Why have you forsaken me? That is the proof text used in religion to say God can't bear to look on sin And now I'll show you in a minute. That's not what was happening there at all That wasn't even that wasn't even what's at stake God was it was he always hated John 3 16 growing up I know so he thought was great news But God still of the world he sent his only begotten son and my thought was if he loved the world He should have come himself Why are you sending the kid see my dad wants a clean yard so he sends his sons into the yard to clean it up You want the clean yard clean yourself your dumb yard. I didn't buy the dumb thing You can ask my parents. I was one tough child to raise no doubt about it And I'm reading John 3 16 going oh what Jesus got the short straw and the one thing I didn't like about the passion movie is at the end of it Jesus gone through all this dying and stuff and there's tear comes from God It's like God's a million miles away on another planet somewhere God was in Christ How could God not be in Christ? How could he because you know, yeah, mostly we're in each other But you know on the bad days. Hmm staying over here. I can't bear to look on that God was in Christ reckons on not counting men's trespasses against them Reconciliation is the language of restoring relationship. That's more important than resolving the issue Yeah, right there. Jesus saying my God my God. Why are you saying? Then people say see what I was told about that growing up when all our sins were put on Christ He was guilty of all our sins. God couldn't bear to look on that. God had turned his back on the Sun Yep. Oh and because they really need God not they need you to perform better. That's It all comes down. Oh You're getting ahead of me Appreciate it, but you're getting ahead of me. We'll get there. It's okay. That's good. I like it That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ not counting men's sins against them And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. He sees this passage It was all about motivating people to witness and When he talks about us having the message of reconciliation, he's talking about the reality of reconciliation when I'm reconciled with father Then there's nobody I don't want to help get reconciled with father But I'm not gonna reconcile some obnoxiously Christian Exploited all our words for evangelism if you'll note even the word evangelism is all manipulate words conversion Right evangelism It's all about manipulating somebody to get where you want them to get to Jesus didn't talk to us about converting people But we're gonna see at the end of this some of that little chart thing I gave you that some of you grabbed It's how to live loved in a way that incarnates his life in the world. The world gets to see Christ in you And when they see Christ in you, they're gonna want some of that Well, they see religion in you. I don't want any of that. You got to manipulate people into religion at boring But when God makes himself known in you and Jesus takes demonstration in your life, believe me People are gonna say man. I want some of that The message of really reconciliation is not just words. We're supposed to say or tracks. We're supposed to pass out It's a life. We live I live reconciled to God and having been reconciled to God. I live reconciled to you. I Don't let anything get in the way now of me and another person You can lie I'm involved in the business deal with somebody right now And we don't have any paperwork signed between us and some guy I a lawyer who's gonna look over my shoulder on this and it's has to do with a book that we're trying to get published And the first thing he asked me said you got paper with this guy And I said no got no paper said I will not help you if you don't get paper I said I really don't want paper with this guy to be honest if he if he cheats me out of this I don't want to be involved and I'm really not looking for it to be my provision because God's my provision anyway And he goes okay. I don't understand this. I said I know you don't He said but I need paper to look over your shoulder because I don't want you to do something stupid and hurt yourself So I called the guy I'm innocent listen, you know, I don't want paper I know you don't want paper the lawyer wants paper if he's gonna help us and we want his help So can we sign a statement? He's he has signed a statement that we sell a statement will not cheat each other Okay, thank you. We got paper now. So the lawyer asked me about paper. We got paper Does the paper mean anything if you want to cheat me next week? It doesn't mean a thing It's just stupid But to live exploitation free in the world see what we know is boy people betraying us hurts So you protect yourself from being betrayed? But then if you get betrayed sometime and you survive it and God's bigger than your betrayal Hey, yeah, so worried about it the next time It's okay I've had bad experiences working closely with people. I've had good experiences working closely with people I'm fine But turns out bad turns out bad The message the life is reconciliation. We'll talk more about that tomorrow. Let's get to the cross Sorry, I digress So we are therefore christ's ambassadors as though god were making his appeal through us We implore you on christ's behalf Be reconciled to god for god made him who had no sin to be sin for us So that in him we might become the righteousness of god. That's interesting language God made him who had no sin to be sin not to be guilty of our sins Not to have some innocent victim throw the sins on him punish that we're all free. It's not that It's not that at all it's I'm going to make him sin itself the personification of sin for what purpose Language of romans 8 says this in the first few verses that you know is therefore now no condemnation That those are in christ jesus who walk every day in the spirit of the lord for what the law could not do Weak as it was in human flesh God did in the likeness of sinful flesh And in that sinful flesh condemned sin Consumed sin The language is not justice. The language is cure Here's how I want to illustrate that for you as we talk about because I think this is what really happened on the cross There's five things that converge at the cross We've already talked about two of them here. There's a father and there's a son at the cross holy spirits there too Not embellished in this passage, but They're all in each other. They're all there. I've got no issues with that but father and a son sin and shame He who knew no sin became sin for us. That's here Hebrews chapter 12. What did jesus most despise about the cross? It wasn't the suffering was it? Who for the joy set before him? Endured the cross despising the shame So sin and shame are there And then wrath is there Now see we all scared of wrath the wrath is We heard expressed earlier if you know there's the good guy god And then there's the wrath guy god and we we've got wrath as something other than love And I think we get that maybe from our own parenting. We know from our little kids growing up. There's all those endearing little children They're waking up from their naps. They're so wonderful And then it's the kid that's doing for the thousandth time the thing you've told them not to do And there's something about you just want to grab him by the back of the neck and just you know Come on you get it right And we think that's the difference between affection and wrath And we're not feeling very affectionate in our wrath So we separate god from his affection in his wrath But if god is love if that's his very essence and nature Then how does wrath exist in god apart from it being an expression of his love? They can't can it So you haven't got the loving god and then the wrathful god you haven't got that You've got a loving god Who is affectionate part of that affection is something god calls wrath We look at it as human anger because it looks like anger But it's not Wrath theologically is defined this way Wrath is the full weight of god's being Brought against that which destroys the object of his affection God's wrath is the full weight of god's being Brought against that which destroys the object of his affection And the best example i know of wrath in my life is sarah my wife I've seen wrath in her unlike anyone i've ever met i'll tell you the story It happened now 23 years ago because my son was two We were camping up in the mountains And we just finished breakfast and i'd kind of hunkered down in my hammock to read a book And sarah was kind of deciding between reading and crocheting or something so she was puttering around Stuff in the around the camp table to see what she would do All of a sudden i hear this blood curling scream from my two-year-old boy who's off about 25 yards playing in a little patch of trees and This is not pretty but i'm a dad so One of the problems of being a dad particularly when i've got this in a hammock which doesn't move from the hammock easily once it's in Um, I hear the screams. Yeah, and i'm looking up to assess whether or not my son needs me to respond Because i've heard screaming before that really didn't need a parent other than to say hey knock it off right My wife's a mother She was she is a mother She hears the scream she's already running. She didn't even thinking She's not doing what i'm doing. I wonder if he needs me My wife would rather run to a false crisis Than not run to a real one So whatever analysis i'm doing in the hammock. She's doing on the way there all that to explain why she beat me to it Screams from my son. I look up sarah starts running I'm looking up to what's going on and i now notice he's caught in a swarm of bees And i go oh my gosh, so i'm trying to get myself out of the hammock as fast as i can to get him I'm yelling at sarah stop honey. I'll get him sarah is allergic to bee stings. We have no medication with us We are two hours from the nearest hospital when i yell sarah stop. I'll get him does she stop She's a mother She later claims i never heard you I told you To stop i'd get him sarah is not going to let her boy hurt one second longer even at her personal risk She runs into the bee swarm And the most compelling thing from that moment for me was to look on my son's face. I'm now running behind sarah I'm a little bit behind. I'm still yelling honey. I'll get him. I'll get him. Don't want you to get stung sarah's about five yards from andy Whatever fear the bees had invoked in my son. He you know, he's flailing. He's terrified. He's screaming When he saw mama bearing down on him Whatever fear he had of the bees transferred to her He thought he'd seen that face before too. What was on that face? I don't know. It's running away from me. I didn't see it, but i'm willing to bet that face looked mad, right? Very mad Mad at what andy? No mad at the bees Andy didn't know in that last five yards as she's making his way toward him. He thinks he's the one in trouble Oh my gosh. I've done something. I don't know what it is Whatever the bees had invoked in him in fear. He looked at his mom and he just this look of absolute terror and he starts crying And sarah scoops him up and it takes him a moment to realize She's not picking him up to whack him a good one and she's done that before too She was picking him up to hold him to her chest and to run him out of the bees swarm He finally gets that and his cries of fear and don't have it suddenly changed to just sobs of safety And sarah runs out of the swarm and i'm there fairly quickly after and Andy never got stung sarah did That's wrath The full weight of her being Brought against that which destroys the object of her affection. Do you get it? That makes sense That's what wrath is The wrath of god the new testament says is revealed against all unrighteousness the wrath of god is what will Take this temporal broken corrupted age And transform it into a new heaven and a new earth The wrath of god is the fire that's going to burn everything so that everything Of darkness and sin and shame is consumed by god's wrath god's wrath is In the language of cancer treatment it is the chemotherapy for sin and shame does that make sense? It's what cures it Now chemotherapy i've got a friend that's just went through some very invasive chemotherapy for recurrent melanoma that's metastasized in his lungs Experimental treatment at the university of calt southern california Um, we every time he was in there getting treatment. We were down my wife and i visiting him and just helping his wife get through this thing 10 chance of the chemotherapy even being effective 90 chance that it wouldn't be what's chemotherapy? It's poison, isn't it? The hope with the poison is we've got this mixed in the right amount of brew that it's going to kill all the bad cells in you Without killing too many good ones He'll kill some good ones. Want it? Air falls out stomach lining gets disrupted if we get nauseous It's all part of chemotherapy because those are the good cells that are getting killed by the poison chemotherapy is controlled poison And we hope we've mixed it in the right amount that will kill the disease before it kills you And my friend that we just finished that treatment. He got his scan back a couple weeks ago. His lungs are completely clear So that's just a wonderful thing. It's only 10 chance of even being effective But the two tumors he had it completely shrunk are no longer on the scan So that's cool. He's still got another 18 months of other kinds of treatment to ensure that it won't have spread anywhere else And won't come back. So that's a long road ahead But god's wrath is like chemotherapy It's what condemns sin in this age It is what is going to recreate a new heaven and new earth is what consumes sin And when god's wrath breaks out in the old testament among groups of people, what happened? People die How quickly do people die in the face of god's wrath? How quickly? Yeah, give them a couple minutes maybe No Hey people snuffed out right now and we we got that whole deal. Oh god, just man Don't take him off because he can't control himself God's wrath breaking out in the old testament is when sin is too little It's going to infect a whole lot of people and god's going to take it out That same surgery god's going to do on the entire planet at the end of the age The whole book of revelation is about god's wrath Unfolding in a way that consumes this age and leaves us without sin and without shame And god's healing what the cross was Was jesus taking that wrath to himself To cleanse sin in himself So that we who are in him might be the righteousness of god It's a precursor to the end of the age jesus took it for us To open the door into relationship with the father if sin and shame was that which kept us from relationship Then it's sin and shame that need to be consumed And so on the cross when it says he who knew no sin became sin forth I I understand that to be this way and again words fail me here But I think this is as close as and all those texts I gave you some of which will refer to you in a little bit Um Jesus saying no man takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. This is not the sacrifice god needed to love you This is the sacrifice you needed to be free from sin and shame And it's the sacrifice god gives So on that cross it would be this way. It's not me going home and beating my 25 year old son with a baseball bat to love you Here's that deal. It would be me If this chemo they could give my friend Heftier doses of chemo than they gave him, but they couldn't give him anymore and not kill him, right? So this this is what the cross is like It would be as if I went to my friend and said look, let's transfuse your melanoma into my body. I'll take your melanoma here I'll go through the chemotherapy to cure it And when that even though it kills me even though we give it in such a high dose that we're sure we're going to get it all It kills me This isn't medically true, but just assume We could take the antibodies in my blood and put it back into him and it would cure his cancer To me that's the language of the cross It's god curing sin in himself. It's the father and the son he who knew no sin became sin That sin confronts the wrath of god and that confrontation of wrath Wrath consumes sin in the sun. It's the chemo that clears it out So that now we who are in him are the righteousness of god Now we are in him known. There's therefore now how much condemnation none Because he's dealt with it in himself already god has dealt with in his son Everything that he would ever require of you or me He's already done it And so when I realize when I get the reality of that however god makes that because more than just an intellectual Oh, okay. That sounds good There's something innate in our sense of who god is in this before your eyes Jesus was clearly portrayed as crucified from galatians 3. There's some knowing Reality where this comes home My gosh, this father loves me The language of the new testament paul's writings Romans 8 if god did not spare his son, but freely gave him up for us all How will god not give us everything we need for life and godliness? And now we know That nothing can separate us from the love of god not hyphen or deaf nor angels no principalities or things present or things to come He goes on this what what paul comes away from the cross is Wow This god loves me more than anyone ever has or ever will It connected him to the father. It connected him to the son. It connected him to the holy spirit My appeasement based view of the cross didn't do that In the end I might say well, yeah, jesus loved me. He was a good guy He took my punishment that I deserved on himself But what does it say about god if it is in fact they took the disease sin and shame They took the wrath of god themselves to cure it and in themselves when jesus says it is finished. I think he means it is finished Sin now has been consumed in the sun. It's done And it took him This is not specifically spelled out in scripture But I don't think we'd be far afield from looking at the six hours that jesus hung on the cross and darkness covered that whole time That may have been the span of time by which he was consuming The wrath of god or the wrath of god better said consuming sin in the sun If it took six hours of wrath to cure sin And we humans lived how long in the presence of wrath Less than a second What hope had you of ever being your own salvation? What hope did you? What hope had I If I couldn't bear a millisecond of wrath without dying The perfect victim isn't god say okay. I've got this really good thing. It's he needed to be sinless So that death had no hold on him so that he could live through enough wrath to consume sin in the sun The tortures of the cross were not what jesus was praying about in the garden As horrible as the cross and the nails and the crown and the torture and the mockery and the Stripes and all that was doled out to him that we saw depicted in that passion movie among all that stuff Still doesn't get to the point of salvation Which is not the sin has been the sun has been tortured enough for god to be satisfied with sin. It is that god in himself Consumed sin and the likeness of sinful flesh And that god has resolved in himself your disease And when he stood that day in the garden and looked over and don't think he wasn't there He wasn't just there later in the day He was there when adam and eve were talking to a snake And the snake was lying to them about who god was and it shook their confidence in the one who created him And he knew that this would plunge the world at least into six seven thousand years of Pain and conflict and war and disease and sickness and betrayal and hurt and depression and anxiety He knew all that was going to unfold from this one thing and god stands there and doesn't stop it. He knows He's going to pay the biggest price for that not us He's going to enter into our world that we have defiled He is going to take sin into the sun into himself He is going to allow sin to be consumed in the sun the cross then becomes the point of cure Wow To those who are in him. There is no condemnation now I live alongside god every day not in the shame of my failures not in what I lack and what I don't measure up And i'm not good enough. I live in the fact that this father Loves me completely And he has addressed everything in my life that needed to be transformed has satisfied it in himself on the cross in the sun father son sin shame wrath Come together in that cross To cure sin in the race so that all of us Who dwell in him might never know the kind of wrath that will come At the end of the age to consume a world And to leave it in a new heaven and a new earth That makes sense a little bit Now I get to you agree. I see all that but oh wow gosh, that's interesting Maybe it's only that but I want to at least make sense I think it's mirrored in that matthew 23 a passage. We don't teach much these days regretfully because we're doing most of it It's that woe to you scribes Pharisees and hypocrites passage. Remember it You do you love the chief seats in the synagogues. You love titles that men give you It means just all the things we're doing people don't enjoy matthew 23 because we're doing most of it Spend all your time fussing with the outside of the tomb. You never get the inside clean if you don't get the inside clean The outside means nothing You get down to the last one. I think there's like 17 of these woe to you scribes and then vicious Just oh, that's not the nice Jesus. Bring us the nice Jesus. The last one is the worst Woe to you scribes Pharisees and hypocrites because you Say we would have honored the prophets our forefathers killed What he's saying is you guys think you're so good. You would have loved you would have listened to Jeremiah You would have listened to Isaiah. That's what they were saying about themselves. Oh, we would have never killed those guys We would have listened Jesus looks at them and says I tell you what you are going to kill the prophets god sending to you Who's he talking about? absolutely himself And steven and james and others that would follow Yeah, the people who are going to speak the life of god in that day They were going to murder And jesus said i tell you what i'm going to do i'm going to make this generation Now this is See if this isn't a world-class curse. I'm going to make this generation guilty Of the blood of all the righteous men ever shed on the face of the earth From able to Zachariah between the altar. Is that kind of a big deal curse? I would think that's a big deal curse Here's just nice. Jesus, and I love you. I'm a father daddy, you know, and uh, go your way and send them more and all that stuff And now he gives them this world-class curse I want to make this generation that guilty. What's he describing for these acts? And left to itself it'd be frightful mean Except what he says next It says at that time jesus began to lift up his voice with loud cries and tears saying oh jerusalem jerusalem How I long to gather you like the hen gathers the chicks to herself But you are unwilling to come What is he saying? I think the curse he's describing at the end of that litany In matthew chapter 23 Is the curse he's going to drink on that cross I think it's that curse And what he's saying in this other little picture he gives Like the hen gathers the chicks to herself. When does the hen does do that? Chickens are not like puppies. They don't nurse. They don't come to mom for nursing Why did the chicks come under the hen when they're afraid? When a predator's near When the hen house is on fire The hen will call the chicks under herself She'll cover those hens and when that chicken coop burns down her back will be halfway burned through But the chicks will still be alive underneath It's an amazing picture. I think the curse jesus doles out at the end of that litany and matthew 23 is what he's taken on the cross the cup By the if it's possible let this cup pass me that cup Is the cup that had in it Carmen every bit of wrath you needed to be cleansed Joan every bit of wrath you needed to be cleansed sunshine every bit of every drop you needed to be cleansed Wayne every drop i needed in that cup Was what that was the answer to that world-class curse What would cleanse even those that would be guilty of the righteous blood of every person ever shed on the face of the earth And jesus said i'll take it for you amazing language of hebrew of John 10 about No man takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord jesus We know said to peter come don't you know i could call 10 000 angels i call a legion of angels and get me out of here jesus submitted To the cross when he didn't have to jesus was no one's victim on that cross Like the mother hen who would lay over her chicks when She could escape and raise another brood another day She stays you know what it must have been like 9 11 our fellow countrymen in the top of those towers the world trade center The shock when they started jumping from those towers 110 stories up to die on the street below in the asphalt No one was trying to save themselves at that point The reality and firefighters i guess say this in high-rise fires People in the face of encroaching flames will always jump The terror of fire and the heat It's just more than a human can bear and if there's a place to jump out they'd rather die jumping than die being burned The only one not shocked that day was firefighters that people were jumping out of those towers when they had no place else to go And the fire was pushing them the very edges of their offices And they had no escape other than to jump out into the open air It was not shocking to them that it happened imagine jesus In the face of the encroaching flames In the face of a chemotherapy treatment that would absolutely consume to the core of his being any moment of weakness would have called a legion of angels that would have ended it and sealed our fate in the doing And he stays i think this is the most amazing thing about the cross He kept staying through it through the torture through the nails through the crown of thorns through the mockery and now In all of that wasted physically Now consuming the wrath of god for our redemption he stays He stays this has got to get done We're not playing games. This is not just them. Oh, we got to do something So we look like we fix in what jesus did on the cross fixed the reality Of sin and shame and the rice it fixes it just like chemotherapy would fix cancer It would cure it. It would remove it So that now we who are in him which we'll talk about all day tomorrow. How do we live in him? What is that relational life looked like so that if I live that I'm not going back now If I really understand what happens on the cross, how do I today earn anything from god's hand anything? I don't That's not where transformation comes from. It's not well in the face of all the wonderful things god's done for you Wayne, don't you think you should be doing this this this for him? No, I don't quite frankly Because what jesus did on the cross was forever secure to us that our wholeness is going to come out of this Effective relationship with the father that was the purpose of it He took it to himself the whole bit of it everything we needed six hours maybe Of wrath to consume sin in the sun drink it to the dregs Though he could say to us there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in christ jesus. It's gone. It's done deal I wake up and here's what the reality of the cross has changed. Let's just say Uh, he's somewhere in the back there talent. I'm gonna pick on you. Okay, since I know your name and you're far back there We've got some other people beyond you, but uh, I don't remember their names. I remember met you last time But your names, who are you? Lynn and Jim, hi, how you doing? Well, let's use Jim now. Let's go. Let's use Liz. She's right in the back in the middle Can I pick on you for a minute? I'm just gonna ask you to be god for a moment. Would that be all right? Yeah, it'd be fine. I thought you'd do that for me, Liz Let's say this is god and here's the old covenant Lynn, I'm sorry. Thank you. Lynn got it Lynn's god. Let's get this right and let's say sorry you all the rest of you are my sin Okay, sorry all my sin All my struggles, problems, failures, doubts anxieties, angers Temptations, indulgences. You're that The picture the old testament paints is there's god over there. Here's wane here And the only way I can get to god is I've got to somehow get around this through this over this I've got to win this to get to the relationship the more Righteous you can be the more relationship you can have. I love hanging out with sometimes when I speak in places And they they write ahead to say wane could you send us an old testament scripture and a new testament scripture Now when I get that I know I'm in one of those things they call high church Because they gotta have a passage from both and I usually because what I'm generally talking about anyway I always let's do Psalm 15 for an old testament reading. I like watching religious people Read Psalm 15 and feel like yet. We've earned that Psalm 15 is who can ascend to the hill the lord Who can abide in the shadow of the almighty? It's the person who does and there's this litany of things That you have to do and I remember reading that as a religious person going That's me and all those sinners out there don't qualify and I get to get Psalm 15 if you read it right you haven't got a prayer If that's the rules to get to god, you're done pack it in i'm done We're I don't like I like seeing religious people read it going. Oh, yeah, we can ascend to the hill the lord It's us man. It's us for them. We're good. I love that Because I'm gonna talk about it later. Anyway, so I might as well let them know There's only one Psalm 15 talks about one person Who could ascend to the hill the lord? If I have to fix this before I can get to god, I have no hope Here's the new covenant God I'm not going to make you do this Lynn Now I got lin and lisam. I had both is lin. I'm not going to make lin do this But here's the new covenant if lin were to walk all the way over here And stand by me And be fully reconciled relationally. That's the new covenant Now my sin's still there. See you're all still there And god and I just what I yeah love me and I can begin a relationship with this god And as I'm beginning this relationship with god, I'm I if he doesn't bring it up. I certainly Quite a mess over here I've noticed that quite a mess you've got here wing I know man. I just I had a long time. I don't know what to do with it I treat them like friends, but they're not friends there bad stuff And god says you need some help with that Oh my gosh, I need some help with that. You bet I do And out of the relationship God untangles my sin Does that make sense Out of the relationship god untangles my doubts out of the relationship god See when you've got you can't get to god tell your pure and even the little game we play in religion Which is okay if we confess our sins he's faithful. So now we've got this little litany thing we have to do So we're coming to worship on sunday morning or saturday night or whenever we do it Okay, now let's uh first we should confess our sins and then we gotta be thankful to god and then we've got to And we got this whole litany which is all what it's all about making us clean So god's safe to be with And it robs us of the very relationship god wants to have with you at your most broken That god wants to come right up to me right in the midst of all this and say quite a mess there boy That's a isn't it You tired of working on it. You said oh boy. Am I tired of working on it myself? I fixed prior I'd part of you in a closet for a while and then somehow you sneak back out again. I've never figured that out And I've got doubts when I try and pretend they're not doubts and then suddenly the doubts again Then we do these really games we do these high cathartic kinds of gatherings of the body where we're gonna put all our cares on god And then none of us are anxious anymore and we come away from that going wow just I feel so good I feel so free the next morning you wake up and the anxiety is still there because nothing's changed yet really It's just in a wonderful environment of people who love god together You can push that stuff away for a time, but that's not how we talk about it We talk about it as you know, I put it all in the altar and then I took it back again What a horrible wretch I am I'm just never going to get this right And I tell you it's so nuts Here's how I know you understand the cross If god is the safest place to be At the moment of your worst failure Then you get the cross If god's the one you got to kind of stay away from for a while because I did that thing I knew I wasn't supposed to do I promise got a million times. I wouldn't do it So until I can you know make this confession and usually don't make it right away Usually got to wait a few days because maybe god forgets we play these games with ourselves Yeah, god'll forget three weeks from now. He won't remember it. Now. We're just bringing up Oh god, you have to forgive me in there. Oh, please just from the west god doesn't remember anymore We do weird stuff with all that religiously Forgiveness is nothing more than denial Forgiveness relationally god forgive god does not count my sins against me But that doesn't mean god says ah, we don't care then send all you want God says wing. Don't you know this makes you less wing Not only does it make me less wing Whenever that sin expresses itself Around my wife or my children or my friends or acquaintances or people I pass on the world Not only does that sin diminish me a bit. It diminishes them a bit You got it and you're not big enough to fix it It's a wicked man that I am who will set me free from the law of sin and death That's where roman's 8 begins Ah, there's therefore now god and the cross has come this side of it He and I get to enjoy this relationship that I didn't earn and that I can't earn And as I fellowship and commune with him live in him You know what he begins to sort things out in me and as he sort things out in me I can I can invite him into my most broken moment I can get impatient with sarah and yell at her about something and go in the other room and say god Did you see what I just did to that woman? Not all the kind of what a stupid idiot. I am 45 years old. I should know better than this or 53 actually I don't know what to do about all that. I was gonna lie until I was 40 and now I was gonna make it too I'm so confused See now I go in the other room and I'll just say god. Do you see how I just treated her? You see that? Oh, yeah, that's confession. See it the same way god does. I hate it God what in me? What do I not know about you? That if I knew it, I wouldn't bleed all over sarah with that And god It doesn't answer me in that moment. Here it is wane three points in a poem But god begins to send me on a journey That unlocks what is angry in wane that feeds off into sarah or impatient in wane that feeds off into my children Yes, do I do I go back after my encounter with god and say to sarah? I apologize for what I said to you a few months ago. Stupid. I was impatient angry. God's working on me I am very very sorry. You bet. That's part of it, too Because forgiveness and god is not denial. See we always say forgiveness. Let's pretend it never happened God doesn't pretend anything didn't happen God doesn't count sins against you doesn't factor it into the relationship, but More than anything god wants to set you free of sin God wants to set you free of the doubts that he not condemn you you bad person. You shouldn't have those doubts He'd just say whatever doubts you've got I want to fix Whatever sin still entangles you. I want to untangle you Stop doing it on your own. You never could we could fix our you We don't know what it is to fix ourselves for a little while. No, yeah We don't know what it is. Okay, you know, we really Particularly if our kids are really sick It's easy to be righteous when your kids are really sick because you want Ingratiate god dance to your prayer more. So that that works a little You go to one of those really big revival type things and you just come away from yeah I really want to get right and I promise god So for two or three weeks, you can actually not do the things you promise not to do you can actually act righteous for a while But you know as well as I do in three or four weeks. Sometimes people say three or four days some say three or four hours What you are Comes right back You can go on these mission trips. We go on these mission trips. We come back I will be trans my being an india or being in the townships of south africa I will forever be changed. I get right back in this culture and this culture just Sucks you right out of that again The only endearing change is that what god does in our heart And the only and I'll talk about this more the process is as I let him love me as I experience the love of the father Then I don't need to grab for myself anymore And when I don't need to grab for myself anymore That displaces sin in me I don't think we ever really overcome sin When I live in father's affection, I live free of sin When I lose sight of father's affection and get back to worrying about wane and what wane can do for wane's self I'm right back to the same old wane Because I know I ultimately conquer it It's displaced when I'm in him And it's not displaced when I'm not does that make sense? So tomorrow I want to unpack that with you I want us to kind of crawl around in this cross bit and there's more questions and thoughts to come We'll do some of that tonight too. So if you want to hang around if not, we're going home If you've had enough I've had enough Now I'm happy to be here as long as you want to be here If you don't want to be here, please feel no obligation to say But you want to have some pizza? We'll do that. Have some fun together We're gonna impact now how this lives Because it changes everything God's my best friend today at my most broken And he's the safest one to hang out with and say okay god how we fix in this And he has ways He has ways to change you from the inside out Not only making you a different person for your benefit and it's it does iner to your benefit But he's going to make you a different person so that he shines out of you to the people who aren't near you And rather than your sin twisting them Your freedom will drive them nuts In a wonderful way and the demonstration of god in you will bring a world To you Saying tell me about the god you know The world is not beating our door down to find the god of religion But the world will beat its our door down To find the god and father of our lord jesus christ Who has perfected in every way our redemption who now is our older brother is with us Who is tempted in every way like we are yet without sin that older brother lives with me today Take that older brother this current podcast actually talks about some of you may have heard this very hurry but Man take the older brother that we really have this jesus Who is i mean i one of the things we talk about in the podcast i think it's real important is how we have so Exalted the divinity of jesus in our day that we've devalued his humanity I grew up thinking jesus was only human when he was on the planet Not that jesus is still today fully human in the presence of the father He is god a very god most certainly he's also a man of very man wasn't that he is that I had a friend wake me up to this a year ago in richmond virginia is a methodist guy into the whole high church thing But boy he gets this He says you know how we end up with priests as confessors Gotta go to priests and cure your sins. You got to go confess your faults and get them fixed that way Why did we end up with that? He said because god wired us to need a human mediator Because he wired us for the son The son became man he dwelt among us and then as Glorified man he ascends to the right hand of god the father But he's still man And he said when we have what the early councils and creeds noted was that all the heresies had this in common They devalued the divinity of christ and said he was just a human just a man So the councils and creeds had to embellish the fact that he is god And we lost sight of his humanity and when you don't have an older brother When jesus ceases to be your mediator you will put a man there. That's what he says or a woman you'll put a human there And as he was saying he looked at me says and don't you think that just the catholics either brother? Because that's what you charismatic. Do you have your apostles and pastors and all those Brother you have to yell at me man. I got it. I got it loud and clear I grew up with jesus lord of lords and king of kings, which he is But I didn't go up with jesus his older brother Put him back in that parable the protocol Not the older brother fussing at few and i've slayed on my life, but it comes out put jesus there How's he responding to his younger brother out lost in the pigpen? Well, we don't know because he's well we do know Jesus doesn't put it in the story, but isn't that what the whole incarnation is about? Wandering past pen pigpins Saying to people lost in sin Hey, you know what? Father still loves you Never stopped loving you stands at the porch every day looking for you got a robe got a ring Got sandals got a calf got a barbecue got a party list Any day you want to come home father's ready to bring you home? Come on. Let's go That's the older brother. Yeah That's the older brother. I wake up when I feel estranged from god and oh my gosh. He's so holy and i'm a piece of dirt and you know what? jesus I need my older brother today Be my way to the father show me who this father is Teach me how to live in his house I have an older brother And the language of Hebrews 4 has been tempted in every way like I have been yet without sin So that I have a sympathetic high priest In the presence of the father who knows He knows what my struggles are. He knows what doubt is. He knows what sin is not because he ever fell to it But because he faced it all make sense Let's live on that a little bit take a night and Father we just want to ask you as we leave here whether we even hang out a bit more or we all go but Father pray you just over the Hours we have between now and tomorrow about 18 of them Just pray you'd salt some things in our heart that would be important for each person to see that will help them be more effective in living this journey help them be more free to let you Work this out in them and So father whatever that is tonight and tomorrow morning and while we sleep speaking our hearts and speaking our minds and Win us to who you are and clear up things in us that need to be cleared up and But I just pray you would help this just sort out its way in us Not just overnight, but man now till the end of the age Teach us how to live in your love and your affection To live in the reality of the cross