Luke 1:57-79 | A Song of Salvation | Alex Culpepper

Church. If you want to open up your Bibles to Luke chapter one, that's where we're going to be. Luke chapter one, verse 67, which is quite a ways in to Luke chapter one, but we're going to make our way over to that part of Luke. There is a tactic that is used by oppressive governments, oppressive regimes, when they make wars against other nations. And at least at the time that we find ourselves in right now.

Sorry, at least at the time that we find ourselves in right now, that tactic is kind of universally recognized as evil. So this is what the tactic is. When an enemy wants to erase a people, they don't start by killing the adults. You can't really accomplish much in terms of that. You could try that effort, but a really effective way to erase the people is that you take the children.

You take the children and you take them. You give them new names, you give them new families, you give them new customs and traditions, you give them new stories. And eventually what happens is that those children, especially if they're quite young when they are taken, they grow up believing that their enemy is their home. And the most terrifying part of this is that the kids, as they grow up, in fact, after you spend maybe six months, maybe a year in this kind of circumstance, you start to not feel like a prisoner. In fact, it feels very little to them, like they never belonged to the enemy.

They recognize that this place is normal, and not only normal, that this place is friendly, that this is welcoming to them. So where in your life are you experiencing a captivity that feels normal to you? See, oppressive regimes throughout history, they've utilized this tactic. And I want to tell you that this is not just a tactic of international warfare. This is a tactic of spiritual warfare.

Like whatever evil kings and dictators have done throughout history has been employed much longer and more effectively by our spiritual enemy. Like, human beings have been taken captive because of sin and taken into the territory of evil. And by and large, we are under the delusion that the territory of evil is home for us. And so we think sin sometimes is just, oh, like, stuff that God doesn't want us to do. Those are just things that God, like, God is.

He has these, like, really strict standards, and we need to abide by those standards. And God just doesn't want us to do that stuff, and so we shouldn't do it. But what if sin is more like, what if your spiritual enemy's tactic is to get you comfortable with. With his territory so that lies become so normal that you would be willing to call them your truth. So that freedom becomes foreign enough to feel like a threat to you, so that addiction feels safe enough to give the illusion of peace and hope as you run to it.

So that chains become a normal part of your life, such a normal part of your life that you actually forget that they're. They're even there. And if you. If you grasp this is human existence, it completely reframes how you understand the Christmas story from. From the simple picture of, like, beauty and joy and serenity and peace.

And you see the little rays of light shining around baby Jesus manger and around the stable, and it's a very beautiful and holy picture. And we sing Silent night, Holy night always come. And it's so peaceful and. And that's great. But what if.

What if Jesus arrival on earth is actually like a comprehensive rescue mission planned by God himself from the very beginning? So today is week three in a series that we're calling When Christmas First Sang. And this is a series that intentionally looks at the role that song has played since the very first Christmas. Right. Christmas songs are not a new thing.

People have been singing Christmas songs since before even the very first Christmas, that that poetry and song has been so significant for God's people as they understood the arrival of the Messiah of Jesus to earth. And today's song comes to us from a guy named Zachariah. And Zachariah's Christmas song is a song about God's great rescue mission, what he plans to accomplish. And so that's why we're in Luke chapter one, verse 67. And I'm just going to give you some context for this before we get running.

Who is Zachariah? Zachariah is a priest. He has been chosen by lot, or think of it like dice, like people threw dice to figure out who was going to be the special person to go in and take care of what is called the holy place inside of the temple. See, it was the responsibility of the priests to go and to offer incense in the temple before God. And there were so many priests in Israel at this time that to even be chosen or to have the lot fall on you, to have the dice roll in your favor, to be able to go in and offer incense before the Lord.

It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. And there were some priests who never got to experience this. And so Zachariah is a priest who gets to go into the place where God's presence dwells, kind of like on the other side of a veil in the holy place. But Zechariah is outside of that veil. And he offers up incense to God.

And the whole point of that incense is that priest is to be understood as bringing the prayers of God's people before God himself. The incense rises because the prayers are a sweet aroma before God. And so Zachariah is in there and he's praying for the people of Israel. And what is he praying for? Well, he recognizes that Israel is in the circumstance that is in it.

He recognizes that there is a strong like, we have promises of a Messiah who's meant to come rescue us, but we're suffering under Roman rule and we're longing for Messiah to come right now. And so Zachariah is dealing with all of these realities. He's bringing the prayers of the people before God. And as he is praying, an angel appears and interrupts his prayers. And this is what the angel says.

Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard and your wife Elizabeth will bear a son. This tells us that Zechariah was not only praying for the people, he was praying for his family. His wife Elizabeth had been barren for a long time, and in fact, she was in a age range that would have put her outside of childbearing age. And what the angel tells Zechariah is, hey, your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John, and he will go before him that him is the Messiah. He will go before the Messiah and the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, to make ready for the Lord, a people prepared.

See, Zechariah is in the middle of this pinnacle opportunity of his priestly career. There is no higher privilege for him than to do this until an angel appears and says, hey, actually I have another higher privilege for you. He would have understood when Zechariah heard the angel speak these words, he would have understood this to be a promise that his son would be a prophet who would go and prepare the people of Israel for the arrival of the Messiah. And he says, zechariah, you're going to raise up this prophet who's going to usher in the age of the rule of the Messiah. And even though Zechariah is a priest, you need to know that Zechariah just has a remarkable amount of unbelief in what God can do.

His response, in fact, to the angel, after the angel says this, he says to the angel, you know that's impossible, right? This can't happen. And the angel's response is, behold, you're not going to be able to talk anymore until your son is born. And so Zechariah has to sit in silence for the next nine months while he watches his wife become miraculously prepared pregnant, right in her old age. And then he sees Mary arrive at their house.

And Mary announces the birth of her own son, who is going to be the Messiah. And by the way, she also is miraculously pregnant. And Zachariah is watching all this happen, and he is stuck not being able to talk about it. He can't say a word. This is like being stuck in the middle of the most eventful corner court case in history.

Like, you're a juror in the middle, or you're even participating in the most eventful court case, maybe in your whole life. But the judge has issued a gag order, and you can't tell anybody about the things that are happening in the middle of this court case. Like, I am a verbal processor, especially like when I'm trying to put pieces together and understand a story and a plan. And then you make that thing. You say, oh, this is the most important thing that you will ever do or ever be a part of.

And I can't talk to anybody about it. Like, I cannot imagine what it would be like not being able to talk about these things as they are happening.

And this is where we need to understand. God didn't silence Zechariah to punish him. He silenced Zachariah so that Zacharias faith could catch up to reality. Because forced silence has a way of showing you that you need to spend some time listening. And in his silence, Zachariah is pondering all of these things that are taking place.

Like, oh, oh, God does respond to the need of his people. Oh, God does hear our prayers. Oh, God is interested in setting us free from captivity. And God does keep his promises, but. But maybe not always in the ways that we expect, but God knows exactly what he's doing.

And all of that sets the stage for this morning's song, which is Zachariah's song of salvation.

Now, the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son, right? So the promise was kept. Zechariah now has a son. His wife bore a son. And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her.

And they rejoiced with her. They know, like, oh, there's a. There's a miracle, basically, that's taken place in the midst of that. And they're very excited about this. And so this is all a good thing.

They see the work of God in the midst of this Birth. And it says, on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child. This is the custom and. And the tradition of these people. And they would have called him Zachariah after his father.

So imagine Zechariah has not had any other kids up to this point, their family has been barren. This is Zechariah's only child. And so the natural custom and traditional thing to do is to give that child your name so that he can carry on your legacy as your child.

Verse 60. But his mother answered, no, he shall be called John. And they said to her, none of your relatives is called by that name. Like, they don't get it. This makes no sense to them.

Why would you not call him Zechariah? You don't even have a relative in your family who has the name John. You know our customs and traditions. Why would you not just go ahead and do this in line with traditional. And so they weren't really trusting of what Elizabeth said.

And so they made signs to his father inquiring what he wanted him to be called. They're like, are you sure? Let's ask dad. And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, his name is John.

This shows us that Zechariah has learned faith in God. He did not start in the place of having an abundant faith in God. But now, over the course of time, he has an abundant faith. Remember, he argued with the angel based on his own experience, his own custom, his own understanding of how things go. And he said, hey, you know this doesn't work that way, right?

But then the angel closed his mouth. And then he began to watch God display that he doesn't operate based on customs and tradition and exclusion experience. He operates based on his character and his word. And so then he comes to his relatives, advocating. His relatives are saying to him, you know, we have our customs and our traditions and our experiences.

And they say, so you're going to follow those, right? And in a remarkable moment of faith, he does exactly what the angel told him to do. You shall call his name John. And so that's what Zachariah does.

And they all wondered. They wondered. It was so surprising to them that somebody would break tradition in this kind of a way. But verse 64, immediately his mouth was opened. The response of faith out of him opens his mouth and his tongue was loosed, and he spoke blessing God.

His surprising act of faith brings an end to his muteness. And he erupts. Then out of his muteness, he erupts with a word of praise and honor. To God. And the words that he erupts into are the words of our song of salvation.

These words have been percolating inside of Zachariah for the last nine months. And so we're going to listen to what he has to say. Would you stand for the reading of God's word if you are able and hear these words of Zachariah's song. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our Father Abraham to grant us, that we being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

And you, child, will be called the Prophet of the Most High. For you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Would you pray with me? God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your miraculous working in the midst of your people.

I pray today that you would, Holy Spirit, by your power, enable your light to shine on us, that we might be formed and shaped by the proclaiming of your word. And that any unbelief that would reside in this room would be expelled by the power of your name and by the power of. Of your word here this morning, God, would you shed your might and your clarity? Holy Spirit, would you give to us the gift of your presence this morning? And we ask in Jesus name.

Amen. Amen. You can be seated.

This song is broken into two sections. The first section is about what Jesus will do, is about the things that the Messiah will accomplish. And the second section is about what John, Zechariah's son will do. And there's. There's one theme that weaves through both sections that ties the entirety of the song together.

And it is the theme of salvation, the simultaneous blessing of God for his Messiah and blessing of John, who will bring clarity to what salvation will. Will look like. And so this is a song that. That actually provides for us a holistic picture of what it means that God saves. We sang that song this morning.

You are the one who saves. What are we singing about? Well, we are going to figure that out here this morning. Verse 68 says, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people. So, so Zechariah, he wants this song to comprehensively give God glory for salvation.

And so he brings out nearly every single word that the Old Testament has to use in relation to salvation. And so I want to kind of explore some of these words that he's using because, you know, we can kind of gloss over them and read them and not really know, like, what God is saying when he says these things. And I want to. I just want to understand what are these different words of salvation and how do they relate to what God is doing for us? So the first word that he says, he said he has redeemed his people.

This idea of redemption is the payment of a price. It's an economical term. I give you something in exchange for something else. In particular, though, in the context of Israel, the idea of redemption has to deal with the exchange of captives and the Jewish mind. This conjures up two images when speaking about people.

It conjures up the idea of slavery, right? So you have the transfer of ownership of people from one owner to another owner. But the other idea that it conjures up is the idea of prisoners of war, like prisoners of war being set free. So in Israel, like, you may or may not know this, but in Jewish tradition, there is such a strong emphasis put on, if we have somebody who is captive to the enemy, we will stop at nothing to get that person back. We will, in fact, incur great loss to ourselves as a nation for the sake of getting that person out of captivity.

It's kind of like this idea of no man left behind, but taken to the most extreme that you can possibly imagine it being. And the idea behind that is that redemption is a big deal for Jewish people. Why was that? Well, because the Jewish people were formed and shaped by an event called, called the Exodus, where they were set free from their captivity in Egypt. And so within this idea of redemption comes up the payments of an exchange fee.

The event that most Israelites would relate to when they hear the word redemption would be Passover, in which God himself, one of the plagues, as he set his people free from Egypt. The very last plague that he sent on Egypt is that he set, he sent the death of every firstborn in Egypt, except for those houses that had killed a spotless lamb and taken the blood of that lamb and put it over the top of their door. And if they did that, then the angel of death would pass over that house and move on to the next house. And so in this event, they have this experience where something good died so that we don't have to. Something good died for us so that we don't have to die.

And they consider the Passover their redemption from Egypt. They were saved from death and brought out of slavery by the giving of the life of something good. And so when the word redemption is connected to the word salvation for Jewish people, we. We're talking about something of great cost being exchanged in order to set people free from a place of captivity. It goes on.

In verse 69, it says, he has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets. That word horn, when you see it in Old Testament literature, it's almost always talking about a king, a king who. Who comes up. And so he has raised up a horn of salvation. This is a king who is coming to save.

The idea here is that there's going to be a mighty king that brings salvation. So let's talk about that actual word, salvation. What is salvation? Salvation is a heroic rescue from a desperate situation. This word emphasizes the might of the one who is doing the saving, right?

Their ability to accomplish something great for the sake of those who are desperate. And so the horn of salvation is a heroic king in David's line, who does heroic things for his people. He is mighty, he is great, he is powerful. This is what the word salvation is saying. When you see the word, it speaks of the character and strength and power of the one doing the saving.

Verse 71, that we should be saved from our enemies, from the hand of all who hate us.

So you cannot have a biblical discussion about salvation without talking about enemies and oppressors. Like, if you don't grasp this, you're going to read a lot of the Old Testament and it's just not going to make sense to you right there. Salvation is not just about you and God. It's about you and God and who he is saving you from, what he is saving you from. And Zachariah is going to come back to that idea in a moment, right?

He's going to bring a more fuller understanding of what that means in a second. But then in verse 72, he says, to show the mercy promised to our fathers, to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham to grant us this Word mercy is so significant and we don't really grasp the significance of it. We're kind of dealing with language and translations and all of that reality. This word is a direct reference to a word in the Old Testament in the Hebrew language called hesed. And that word hesed is speaking of God's incredible loyalty, the kind of never stopping, never giving up, always and forever love.

It is a love that is unmatched. It is a love that is endless. And it is a love that is committed to the things that God has committed himself to. It is a love that does not break. And so when it says to show the mercy promised to her, that's not just mercy.

This is speaking of God's firmly committed, covenant keeping love. He does not break his word. He is faithful to the people that he attaches Himself to. And he is showing that in this salvation, okay, verse 74, that we being delivered. This is another salvation word.

Delivered from the hands of our enemies might serve him without fear and holiness and righteousness before him all our days. This third word for salvation is deliverance. Now while the word salvation will emphasize the greatness of the one doing the saving, the word deliverance emphasizes the power of the one you need to be saved from. This idea of deliverance is an act of war. That's really what you're talking about.

You're talking about a powerful act that has to take place to overcome a very powerful enemy. And so like you are trapped by someone who you cannot overcome in your own power, you are helpless against the, the power of that one who has trapped you. And so all of these words that Zechariah uses, all of this was expected in talking about the Messiah. All of it was familiar for Israel in talking about the Messiah. This is how they thought about God's promise to send a king.

And so this first segment of Zechariah's song is a blessing that kind of gives a comprehensive picture of how Israel understood salvation. And so let's just like, let's put that whole picture together. What makes for salvation? The first thing is the recognition of a desperate need. You got to know that there is a problem that you can't do anything about, that you are desperate against that problem, that you can't get yourself out of this situation, that you are hopeless and you are helpless.

If it's just you and the problem, you are always at the mercy of the problem. The second aspect is the identification of an oppressive enemy. You start to realize that whether it's because of the problem or because the enemy Created the problem. However you look at it, the enemy and the problem are working in cooperation to make you more hopeless.

So then what else makes for salvation? Well, in Israel's mind, you cannot have salvation without a hero. You need a heroic king who will step in, who will do the things that you cannot do for yourself.

What else? Well, you have attached to this whole thing. There's some kind of fee that has to be paid. This isn't like we're just like, oh, yeah, you can run the rescue operation, right? But in Israel's understanding, you're talking centuries, almost a full millennia of Bible written, of words written down in scripture, of understanding, and of watching God act in the world.

And what they understand is that somehow, for some reason, whenever salvation happens, it happens in relation to the payment of an exchange fee. Something has to be paid. Something of great price has to be paid in order to accomplish salvation. And then, of course, that ultimate redemption, that ultimate payment being Passover in the Jewish mind. So something good in some way has to die in my place.

They reinforce that idea with the sacrificial system every time they make sacrifices.

You have in this. Well, the love of God makes for salvation, right? He does it because he loves us. He does it because he values us in a way that we can't even imagine valuing ourselves, right? We can't imagine being worth as much as he is willing to pay for us, but that's how much we are worth.

We're worth quite, quite a bit to him, and he is committed to us in a significant way. So finally, it is also the overcoming of the enemy that makes for salvation. This is the comprehensive picture when we say this word, because I do, like, we're. We're a people, right? The tradition that we find ourselves in, that we come out of, we use this word, salvation a lot.

We talk about what it means to be saved. Like, have you been saved? Right? And if I ask you that question, a lot of us in this room know what I'm saying. Have you committed your life to Jesus?

Have you experienced the grace and redemption and forgiveness of Jesus? Do you know what it means to have been rescued by Jesus? Are you saved? And I want to let you know that it is quite simple to become one who is saved. But the salvation that we receive is anything but simple.

It is complex and comprehensive and intricate and wondrous and vast.

And that's what Zachariah is describing for us, the incredible extent and nature of salvation. How great is this salvation that is coming?

And so I did this for us. So that. Because sometimes when you sit down and you read Scripture and you come across some of these words and you're like, oh, I know those are nice words, but I don't know what they mean. They're actually communicating a facet of God's character and what he accomplishes for our sake. And so part of why I'm doing this is I want to give you some of the source code, the material that is in Zachariah's head as he's saying these things, and indeed that's in the head of his listeners as they hear these things, so that when he speaks them out, they're overwhelmed at the things that he's talking about.

And he's weaving these ideas together in a remarkable way in this poem. And then he moves into the last section, and as he moves in the blessing from what Jesus will do to what his son John will do, he brings some clarifying and refining of categories in ways that I can tell you that his listeners are not expecting. So imagine. Imagine this with me. Zechariah is holding his child, and he's blessing God.

He's got his head lifted up to the sky. He perhaps even has one arm lifted up. He is singing a praise, speaking this blessing to God for what God is going to accomplish through his Messiah. And then the scene shifts, and he takes his child, and he holds this child in front of him, and he says, and you, child, verse 76, and you, child, will be called the Prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people. See, Zechariah is now blessing his Son.

And his son has been given a divine task and purpose by God to be a prophet who will show up before the Messiah and will prepare the people for the salvation that the Messiah is going to bring. And the thing that John is blessed to bring, the thing that Zechariah gives his blessing over his Son to bring about, is knowledge. Now, I just spent 15 minutes describing to you the vastness of the salvation that God has to offer. And so when he says to give knowledge, all the people listening were like knowledge. Don't we already know?

But you see, this is where the details become very important because the people that Zachariah was speaking to would have filled in the blanks about this salvation in a different way than Zachariah knows that God is going to bring it about. See, the people who are listening would have thought, you know, our desperate need is one of politics. One of land is one of national autonomy. Our oppressive enemy is Rome. Our heroic king is going to raise up an army that will conquer Rome, that will drive them out.

And we are the people that God loves, because God loves us. And he will overcome Rome, those people, for our sakes. And Zechariah, when he blesses John to bring knowledge, he blesses John to bring knowledge because he knows that his neighbors and his relatives will fill in the blanks of their salvation according to their customs and their traditions and what they understand. And if they do that, he knows that they will miss the salvation that God truly has to bring. And so what is the knowledge of the salvation to give knowledge to his people, knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins.

See, after nine months of pondering and watching events happen and not being able to talk and only being able to think and to listen to what God is doing and observe, this is what Zechariah blesses his son to do. You, son, are going to tell God's people that they've misdiagnosed the problem, right? That they're looking for a doctor who will treat symptoms but will not treat the underlying disease. See, circumstances are difficult. Rome was oppressive, and they felt weighed down by the way that their lives just were not going the way they expected their lives to go.

But John wasn't going to tell them about a Messiah who would fix their circumstances, because that's not where the salvation that Zachariah is talking about starts. Zachariah says, you, my son, will help them see they've been taken captive by a different enemy. You will help them see that they need a different kind rescue. You see, this is what we do. We come to God expecting him to fix our circumstances.

And you know what he does? Sometimes he does graciously intervene in our circumstances. But the rescue that he has to offer is not primarily about our circumstances. It's about dealing with sin and rescuing those who have sinned and those who have given themselves into the territory of a destructive enemy. See, the war that Messiah was coming to rage was not a war on Rome.

It was a war on sin.

And so if sin is the enemy, then forgiveness is not a side benefit. Salvation, the forgiveness of sins is the battlefield of salvation. Zachariah says, you will show them that redemption, the payment of an exchange fee, that deliverance, that rescue from the hand of a powerful enemy, that salvation, the heroic nature of the one doing the saving, that you will show them, son, that all of this is going to be accomplished through the forgiveness of sins.

Why? Well, because of the tender mercy of Our God. There's that word mercy again. He's committed to us. He loves us deeply, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high.

And verse 79 is the thing that really brings all of this together. To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Those words, those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, is an explicit reference to a psalm that every person in that room or in the listening area had memorized. It is Psalm 107. And Psalm 107 is a Psalm that speaks in four different ways of what it looks like to sit in captivity behind prison bars, in afflictions, stuck in our chains because of our sin and opposition to God.

If you read Psalm 107 says God's people, prisoners and afflictions and irons, because they had rebelled against the words of the Most High, because they had spurned his counsel, because they had rejected him being in their lives, they sat in darkness and in the shadow of death. And do you know how each stanza of that psalm ends? Then they cried to the Lord in their distress, and he freed them from their captivity. He broke apart the bars of iron. He broke the chains off of their wrists.

So, Church, would you just see this with me this morning? Christmas is not God entering the world to make life easier. It is God entering enemy territory to rescue captives. That's what he has come for. This is what he is accomplishing.

And the captivity is a captivity that we have created for ourselves, and yet he is nonetheless valuing us to the extent that he would seek to rescue us from it.

So what? So what? The first one is this. I would tell you, stop calling your captivity personality. Right?

So a sin is a strategy of an enemy to. To make chains feel normal to us. Then some of what we excuse as, oh, that's just the way that I am, is actually territory that you've surrendered to your enemy. And Jesus wants to redeem that part of your life. Jesus wants to bring salvation into that aspect of your life.

And so let's not call the places where we find our captivity our personality. Let's invite Jesus into those spaces and see him redeem it. So you got to name the chain, whatever it is, and you have to give it to Jesus and know that it's not your identity he is. See, salvation is vast and comprehensive. And if you truly believe in what he's done for you, then you will not stop short of these places of your life that you feel like, oh, like, well, I get to stay like that.

I don't have to change that. No. Why not let the battlefield extend into every corner of your life? And so what does this look like? Well, it looks like confession and it looks like community accountability with other people.

It looks like bringing hidden patterns into the light. But we need to give Jesus all the space that he has come to claim. And the second thing I would say to us this morning is, receive the salvation Jesus has come to offer.

The primary issue, if you have not crossed the line of faith, the primary issue that you have is that you are a sinner who is given over to your own way. And you have a father, but you don't know that he's your father because you've allowed captivity to become your home. You think this is safe? You think this is comfortable? You think this is home?

And Jesus came to rescue you, right? To show you, to give you knowledge and understanding that, hey, actually, you are stuck in a way, in a place that is not good for you, that is killing you, and I want to bring you out, out of it. So would you quit holding God at a distance, right? He's come a great distance in order to pay a great price to help you see that you are his treasured possession. Because Jesus came, and the great price that he would pay is his own life.

He would give his life to die a death that you deserve to die for the captivity that you've given yourself over to. And in that death, he would pay a price so that you could have a way to be reunited with God, so that you would not have to stay in the kingdom of darkness, but that you could be transferred out of one kingdom and into another kingdom. And so your job is to just simply receive what he has to offer. That's all you have to do. You say, what action do I have to perform?

What thing do I need to do? What step do I need to take? You know, you need to receive. There's nothing that you can do for it. You are powerless when it comes to your own salvation.

You cannot rescue yourself from this enemy. Only Jesus can do it for you.

So would you receive the free transfer of citizenship that he gives you? Would you receive the new identity that he offers as his beloved child? If today's your day to receive that and you're here in person, we're gonna transition to a time of communion. When we do that, I'd invite you. There are places on my right and my left.

There are people who are ready to pray with you. And if you need to receive salvation today, when we go into the time of communion and people come to the table. You go over to one of those places on my right or my left and there are people who are ready to pray and lead you in what it looks like to receive the salvation that Jesus has to offer. But for the rest of us, I'm going to pray and then we're going to transition into that time of communion. Lord Jesus, I'm grateful that we have a chance here to celebrate what you came to do for us.

Would you be glorified in our remembering of you and are celebrating of what you accomplished for us? I ask this in Jesus name, amen.