The New Jerusalem (Unshakable - Week 6)

In his sermon, Matt Nussbaum discusses the disparity between our expectations and reality, using personal anecdotes to illustrate how life often falls short of our hopes. He emphasizes that this longing points to a deeper truth about our existence; we are made for another world, specifically referencing the New Jerusalem described in the Book of Revelation. Nussbaum reassures listeners that in this future reality, evil will be judged, sadness will be absent, and joy will abound forever. Ultimately, he invites the congregation to embrace the hope that comes from following Jesus, who offers fulfillment and the promise of a perfect community and joyful existence in the life to come.

Transcript

Good morning.

Category today is when your expectations don't meet your reality. All right? It's like a Jeopardy Category. When expectations don't meet reality. Example.

Probably 10, 15 years ago, my wife and I and our four kids, they were all younger than we're heading down south for vacation. We stopped off in Nashville, Tennessee. So I think at the time, maybe the Internet wasn't fully on board. So we were flipping through these books and we found this hotel had really cool pictures, had a guitar shaped swimming pool. We thought, this is the ultimate for our kids.

A guitar shaped swimming pool in Nashville, Tennessee. So we get there, we're walking to the hotel. We walk into the room where the guitar shaped pool was. Hmm. There's no water in the pool.

The lights were all low and it was dingy and dirty. Expectation, reality, right? Expectation was way up here. Reality was way down there. You know what I'm talking about.

You've had those experiences. The Internet pictures lie. All the brochure pictures lie, right? Another one. This is one my son told me, my youngest son.

So he has friends that are from the South. Anybody's eaten in a Whataburger before? Any Whataburger fans? This is like a burger chain. Oh, the Whataburger's the greatest.

It's the greatest. You got to go to Whataburger. My son said when he went there and got a burger, he was just like, it's okay, right? Expectation, reality. Speaking of burgers, in N Out burger in California will always meet your expectation.

But anyway. But you know, but then there's the times when my wife was really good at negotiating prices like Airbnb, and we went to a place in Florida. It exceeded our expectations, but the reality was it lasted seven days. We had to go home. All right, so we have these expectations, and there's a whole science of psychology, of this expectation.

We have these expectations and we pin our hopes on it and our hearts kind of go there. And then the reality is either it doesn't meet the expectation or it lasts for seven, eight days and then you're back home. And we have these expectations of what those things in the future will be like. But reality doesn't always match that. I wonder if we're honest if we think of heaven that way.

Okay, this is what the Bible says it's supposed to be. But just in case my expectation is too high, I better get what I can in this life. Cause I don't know, is the reality really the expectation? What is the reality? What should I expect?

So we've Been doing a series, I don't know, the last probably six weeks in the Book of Revelation called Unshakable, Unshaken, Unshakable, something like that. Yes. And it's the whole idea of John was writing this book. The Book of Revelation was a vision that John wrote. The Apostle John wrote to people who were in situations where life was tough, in some situations, persecution, other things going on.

He's wanting them to be unshakable people in their souls. And so a couple things we've talked about, you know, early weeks. Sean talked about the churches of Revelation and the lampstands and the whole idea of don't let yourself drift when time gets hard, when it gets hard, don't drift spiritually. We talked about the Lamb on the throne, and don't worship anybody else but the Lamb. Don't bow to anyone else.

Don't bow to any other part of culture, only bow to Jesus. And then we talked about last week. Sean talked about, you know, the weird stuff of Revelation, the beast and the numbers and all that stuff. But it's all this symbolism. This is what's going on in the world.

But in the end, this is a quote that Sean had referenced. One theologian said, when I look in the Book of Revelation, I see the future and God wins. So that's a big picture, Revelation. Today we're doing the very last part, the last couple chapters of the Book of Revelation, and we're talking about the New Jerusalem, so the New Jerusalem. And we're talking about what that means.

And I've titled this the New Jerusalem. The life your heart is longing for. Let me just talk about the word longing. Because if you're like me, you have longings, you have desires, you have expectations and hopes. But we haven't.

We're not living there. But what do we do with these longings, and what should they tell us? A really great author, and many of you have heard of him, C.S. lewis is a British author, came to follow Jesus later in life. But he wrote this about this longing that we have, and the longing being a signpost to God.

This is what he wrote. If I find in myself a desire, a longing, if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. I'll read that again. If I find in myself a desire, a longing which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. Say that with me.

I'm made for another world. 1, 2, 3. I am made for another world. We are. We're made for another world.

And Lewis said, which scripture kind of will validate, is that there's times we have these longings. And here's the word I'm gonna introduce. This is a word we all know. Here's the word for the day. Pang.

All right. Like the lightning bolt there, too. I put that on there. Pang. Pang is an intense emotion that you feel.

And sometimes we have pangs that are part of the longing and the desire and kind of this haunting emotion. Like, I think I'm made for another world or something's not right. So we have these pangs, and we have these. And they kind of send us their signposts to this other world. The Germans call it sein zug.

It's a German word, but it kind of means this desire, this longing I have that. I don't think it's going to be filled in this world, but I don't know how it's going to be filled, but it's something. So I'm just calling it a pang. Right, so we're going to read in a second here From Revelation, chapter 21, one of the second to last chapter of Revelation. And it kind of talks about this end reality of this new Jerusalem, this new heaven and new earth.

And it's. You know, if somebody walked in a church like today and they had knew nothing about Christianity, they would probably think this sounds a little weird, like out there after life. But I would hope they would also say something about, it sounds like I'm made for that, Right? So Revelation. Put it on the screen.

We're gonna read it out loud together. This is Revelation 21. This is John after all this stuff going on in Revelation, and he's saying, this is what I'm seeing in the future, right out loud with me. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared, and the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, raise your voices. Look, God's home is now among his people. He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

There will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever. And the one sitting on the throne said, look, I am making everything new. That line again. Look, I am making everything new.

He then said to me, write this down for what I tell you is trustworthy and true. Write this down. He's telling John it's trustworthy. It's true. So this new Jerusalem coming down from heaven, if you can kind of see this vision and you read the other parts of the chapters, it's like this city that's perfectly symmetrical.

It's like a, you know, high as it is, wide as it is long. And the number of gates, there's 12 gates representing the 12 apostles and the 12 tribes of Israel. All this symbolism, but really what it represents is it's the kind of community we all have long are longing to be a part of. It's the perfect community and it's in our future. And again you might say, well, I'm dealing with the present.

But I. But one of the things that's true is how we deal with the present is significantly impacted by what we see in our future. It's like anticipating a fun vacation. You can endure some hard days cause you got something. So how we deal with the present, realities, struggles, hardships, how we respond to that, how our soul responds to that, will be shaped by what we believe our future is.

And I know you might be thinking while we're talking about life after death and how do we know if this is true? And da ba da. Well, you know, you have different, you know, Buddhism believes that just, we all just kind of, kind of go into nothingness. Some people believe it's just when we die, we're just annihilated. It's over, done.

Then there's reincarnation and other things. You have to decide what you think is true. I choose. And many of us here choose what the Bible says because we trust Jesus. Jesus trusts the Bible, so we trust this to be true.

They can't all be true. Every religion can't have their own after death experience. And based on what religion you are, is what you'll have. There's probably a truth for the whole human race. And again, we trust Jesus, so we trust what Jesus has to say.

So there's three things I want to highlight about what this new Jerusalem, beautiful community, life we've always longed for is like. All right, three things. First, one is this evil will finally be judged. And you might say, well, do we have to start with that? But we do.

And read the part in quotes with me from Revelation 19. All right, his judgment, 1, 2, 3. His judgments are true and just. They're saying that about God, that's repeated three times in the book of Revelation, saying to God, your judgments are True and just. You can be the judge.

And those are all said after God has done something, whether it be with Satan or the beast or with those who don't know God.

19 times in the book of Revelation, the word judge shows up. Judge means you're gonna separate this from that. It's separating this from that and that. That is the evil. And you might.

You know, the passage we didn't read from Revelation 21 was like, two passages later says this about the new Jerusalem. After all this beautiful stuff, no more crying, no more weeping. Then Revelation 21 says this. But the cowards, the unbelievers, the corrupt, the murderers, the immoral, those who practice witchcraft, idol worshipers, and all liars, their fate is in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. And now you're thinking, oh, yeah, here we go.

Hellfire, damnation, right?

But the fiery lake of burning sulfur is mentioned a number of times in Revelation. So we trust Jesus, we trust the Bible. So there's something there, that evil has to be eliminated. There are some who have thought, well, in the end, all evil morphs into good. There's nothing in life that tells us that.

There's nothing in the Bible that tells us that. And when this statement, his judgments are just and true, it follows that God punishing Babylon, he avenges the murder of the saints. So God is executing justice. And there's something about that, if we're honest. There's a pang of rightness to that.

God needs somebody. I mean, the book of Revelation has things about dragons, beasts, bulls, judgment, wr. But I think deep in our hearts, there's a pang. We have what we want, injustices to be righted, right? So we have these pangs for justice.

So anybody seen the Equalizer movies with Denzel Washington or the Taken movies with Liam Neeson? All right, both those. But I just watched a Denzel Washington one last week. Not in preparation for the sermon, but it worked perfectly. So in the Equalizer, he's like this former super special ops guy who can fight 20 people who have guns when he has the pixie stick or I don't know, but it's one of those kinds.

He wins all the time, but what he's doing is he's always fighting injustice, people that are trafficking children, horrible injustice, people that are exploiting and murdering people, horrible injustice. And he always makes it right. And there was a time in the movie last. I think it was Sunday night, I was watching, and it was just like I had this pang of, this is right. And just now, I'm not saying Denzel Washington, your judgments are true and right.

But the pang is that's what we want from God, right? There's some Quentin Tarantino movies, He has movies about Nazi Germany and about slavery where he turns the tables and Hitler gets killed and the slave owners get killed. Slaves are set free. But there's something about those movies, if you're honest that something, there's a pang like this is the way the world's supposed to be and we want unjust things to be corrected. And if that means injust hard hearted to God, people are eliminated.

We understand that has to be cause if people don't turn their hearts to Jesus, if they never relent or repent toward God, do you want them in the perfect community with you? Do you want them in your neighborhood? Of course we don't. So we want God to be just in his judgments. We're not the judges, God is.

But we trust his judgments. They're right and good. So we cry out for that. I mean, there was even Schindler's List, you know, the movie about World War II and Jewish POW camps and all that stuff. There was a time when I was watching that movie, this was years ago.

And when one of the commandant shot this young kid just for target practice, shot this young Jewish kid.

I was watching by myself and I said out loud to the tv, but I was saying out loud to the character movie, I was really saying out loud to the invisible world. And I said to this person on the tv, God damn you. And I'm not saying that, but it's like I knew there was a pang there. Justice has to be dealt with, evil has to be dealt with. And we know that, we feel that we want injustice, right?

And so part of this new world, this new Jerusalem that we look forward to is evil and is gonna be eliminated. Second thing is this. Your sadness will be gone forever. We just read this that said your tears, your suffering, your pain, it's gonna be gone. Your sadness will be gone forever.

The passage he read says, all these things are gone. All right, Say that with the quotes with me. All right. All these things are gone forever. Suffering, tears, death, one more time.

All these things are gone forever.

We're talking about grief and loss here. That will be gone forever.

What's your story? I'm guessing if we had people stand up, which I'm not going to, many of you have lost a loved one in the last year or two. I'm guessing we're not going to ask people to stand up, but I'm guessing that you have Loss of relationships, marriage fell apart, friendships fell apart, relationships with your parents or your children will fall apart. And there's loss and there's pain, maybe deep pain, grief. And what do you do with that?

I've done a funeral of a five year old child that died in their sleep. That's awful. I'm at the funeral of a 19 year old who died in an ATV accident. It was awful. I'm doing a funeral this week of a 101 year old person.

It's awful. Death is awful. I mean, nobody. There's a passage in the book of Ecclesiastes says it's better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of feasting. And it's like, what?

It's better to go to a funeral home than to go to buffaloes? Why would I do that? But there's something scripture tells us about grief that's good for us because it reminds us we are made for another world. Because if you're in a situation of grief, it's this painful feeling. You're like, I don't know what to do with this cause it doesn't fit the world I'm living in.

This is not the way the world is supposed to be. And it's not sin, death, suffering, pain. It is not the way the world's supposed to be. It's not the way God designed it. Adam and Eve messed it up.

We've corroborated with them as well. And it's not the way the world's supposed to be. So what do we do with that? You know, the sadness in our lives? How does that, those pangs point us to Jesus, point us to the kingdom, point us to our hunger for the new Jerusalem.

You know, Paul, even in second Corinthians, Paul talks about these light and momentary afflictions that prepare us for the weight of glory in the new Jerusalem. That's how Paul says it. These afflictions, these light and momentary afflictions prepare us for the future life and prepare something in our souls. And you might think, what's this guy talking about? What does he know about my pain?

What does he know about my suffering? What does he know about my afflictions? I mean, Paul's just talking about light and momentary. But here's some of Paul's light and momentary afflictions, just for a point of reference, right? Prison flogging.

Five times I was flogged, 39 times I was beaten with rods. I was stoned, I was shipwrecked, I was in danger from Jews, danger From Gentiles. I went without sleep, without food, without water. And he calls those light and momentary.

Who does that?

I want to be that way. I want to be able to deal with my grief and my suffering. Not in denial. Not denial, that's Buddhism. Buddhism is deny the pain.

Paul's not denying. He went through a lot of hard, hard stuff. Suffering. I mean, getting flogged 39 times is not something easy. Right?

But he went through all this, but he says it's all it is. It's nothing. In light of what we're gonna have in the New Jerusalem, one of the things which is true that I read this week, that if we have an improper, an inaccurate view of life with God after death in the New Jerusalem, a weak view of that when we do have sufferings and hardships will crumble, we'll crumble. But if we know there's a hope, an unshakable hope. And this is not like denial.

Again, an unshakable hope. When hardship comes, we hold onto the anchor. But without that anchor, I mean, if your anchor for heaven is we're gonna be fat little cherubs singing songs and showing up in movies like It's a Wonderful Life and maybe that might be fun, I don't know. That's not heaven. And that wouldn't help me stand in a time of difficulty.

But when the Bible tells us evil's eliminated, sadness is gone forever.

When my dad died 40 years ago, like kind of a leukemia kind of thing. And it was awful. I mean, death is awful. I remember walking out of Methodist Hospital with my mom and one of my brothers, and my oldest brother after my dad had died, seen him for the last time kind of thing. The brother was with us, said if it wasn't for a hope of life with Jesus, I'd run out in the street right now and let a car hit me.

And if you've had somebody die, you know exactly what he's talking about. It's overwhelming. And then I remember my dad's funeral. At the end of the funeral, we played the hallelujah chorus. You know, hallelujah, Hallelujah.

We didn't sing it, we just played it. I mean, over the speakers. And it was a. I had a weird pang. Cause in the middle of my grief, I felt this pang of joy.

At that point in my life, spiritually, I wasn't like a hand raiser. I'm not knocking that, but I raise my hands now if you. But I felt like I was supposed to. And it was kind of this weird pang. Of grief with hopeful joy that reminded me I was made for another world.

And it gave me a depth of soul in that moment. I've done the funeral of both my wife's parents in the last couple years. Same kind of thing. And you might have had those. It's those pangs you have when grief is deep, but joy is deeper.

And what do I do with that? But it's beautiful. But it tells us we're made for another world. Because that's what the new Jerusalem is like. That's what our future is like.

Last thing. So evil's eliminated. Sadness is gone forever. And then we will be filled with joy. The book of Isaiah, there's two different chapters.

Isaiah 30:5. In Isaiah 60:5, where Isaiah 600 years before Jesus, probably 700 years before revelation, he writes of the new Jerusalem and what it's going to be like in our future. And he says, we'll be filled with joy and gladness. Say that with me. Filled with joy and gladness.

Filled, not sprinkled with, not have occasional experiences of. But he says we will be filled with joy and gladness. Other parts of Isaiah that talk about this, he used the words like, we're glad. It's a place of happiness. We'll be a source.

You and I will be sources of joy. And then this passage in Isaiah 35, I love this. Says, we will be crowned with everlasting joy.

Get the symbolism out of your head. What would that feel like? To walk around every hour, every day, every month, every year of the rest of our lives in eternity, with joy sitting on our heads, which the clear perception there is. It's also all through our bodies, all the time, joy. So it's these pangs of joy, right?

But in heaven, in the New Jerusalem, it's not just a pang anymore. It's the reality of joy. Cause when suffering and tears are gone, we have joy. So let me just a couple things about joy. Maybe you.

I'm sure you've all had pangs like this. I remember once when I was like, 23, I was playing, like an adult softball league. And I don't think he even had a particularly good game. But I remember standing in the outfield and had one of these moments where I had, like, life is really good right now. It lasted for like, 10 seconds, but it was one of these pangs of, God's good to me.

God's good to me. Three weeks ago, one of my daughters got married. And I was sitting there watching the dancing at the reception. You didn't want to See me dance, right? Although I did dance with my daughter.

You need to see that one. We heated up the dance floor anyway. But when they were dancing and it wasn't alcohol fueled dancing, it was dancing with joy. Most of the people out there were followers of Jesus, but it was joy. And I remember thinking, I want to take this moment and put it in a bottle and save it.

One of my son in law's family members, who's not a follower of Jesus, actually said to him, I didn't know Christians could party like this. And what they were saying was, I'm having this pang that's going against what I thought Christianity was, because I'm feeling joy, like joy. And it was like I said, if I could put it in a bottle. But in heaven it's gonna be on our heads, it's gonna be with us all the time. And you might think of other times where you've had those pangs of joy.

May have been times with your family, may have been a really, really good meal. You're like, this is just, life is good, but it doesn't last. It's kind of like the vacation. It doesn't last, but you have those and it's like it'll be our reality. And one other thing, I'll say this with pangs of joy in terms of filled with joy.

And this is a question I've heard people ask before and it's good to talk about and that's this, will there be sexual intimacy in heaven? Cause that's like, that's the joy of our culture, right? I mean, is God going to take that away? Because if he is, I want to get married first, whatever, right? I don't know exactly what that looks like in the new Kingdom, the new Jerusalem.

It does says we're not going to be God. Jesus says, we're not going to be married or given in marriage. Which made you think, oh, bummer. Guitar shaped pool is empty. I can't be honest, right?

The joy of physical sexual intimacy will seem small to the joy of our personal intimacy with others in heaven. I absolutely believe that. Otherwise why would God do that? Why would he give us this incredible joy, moments of intimacy, and then say, okay, that was for that world. We're done, the pool's empty, let's go to heaven.

Now I don't know what it's gonna look like, but we're not gonna look back and say, oh, I wish I was back there and had that. Cause what we're gonna have is an intimacy with one another and with Jesus. That will make that kind of transcendent intimacy seem like a shadow. So don't think, oh, heaven's gonna tell us it's gonna be a bummer. We're probably gonna have bland food.

No, no, no, no. I mean we are gonna have food. There's a feast. Jesus, resurrection body, he ate and drank and there's gonna be a feast in heaven. And I guarantee it will be good food and good wine and it won't just be like here and there.

And you might say, what do we do when we're in heaven? Well, there's a new heaven and a new earth. Resurrected heaven, resurrected earth. Heaven comes to earth. So in a sense, like when you, if you know somebody who's died, that my father was a follower of Jesus when he died.

Scripture says to be absent in the body is present with the Lord. So my dad is with the Lord right now in heaven as far as we understand the Bible. But he doesn't have a resurrected body yet. Cause that comes within New Jerusalem. When Jesus comes back, we all get resurrected bodies if we have the spirit of Jesus in us.

So he's not like floating around. He's still my dad, Jack Nussbaum, my wife's dad. Robert Mosteller is still Robert Mosteller. But we all get resurrection bodies. Just like the world's gonna be resurrected.

Yeah, the world's destroyed. Peter tells us that. But then God creates a new earth and the new heaven comes to earth. God lives with us and we live our lives on the new planet earth. You might say, what are we doing?

Jesus says, some of us will how we've been responsible for things in this life. We'll oversee things in the other life according to our giftedness, according to our passions. And we will be fully me, you, you will be you and you will be all you ever thought you could be. But in this life aren't because of other things stopping you or holding you back in your own brokenness. So the joy you feel will partially be a large part be I'm me.

I'm finally what I want, what God made me to be. We're not gonna be doing choir practice and playing harp competitions all in heaven. That's not gonna heaven. Heaven is gonna exceed any joy moment you've ever had. Take all those joy moments, put em in a bottle and then expand it to 247 on your head.

And that's what heaven's like. That's what life in the Jerusalem's like. Why would God do anything less? Why would he do anything less?

So there's the last part of Revelation, the last few verses of the last book of the Bible. This is what Jesus says. Cause I'm gonna invite you to something. Cause Jesus invites us. He says, come.

He says, the spirit and the bride say, come. And he's not saying, come to this New Jerusalem. He is, but he's saying, come to me. I'm the king of the New Jerusalem. I will rule with justice and mercy and compassion and great joy.

Come to me, says the spirit of the bride. Say, come. Let anyone who hears this say, come. Let anyone who is thirsty come. So it's an invitation to all of us.

If you're a follower of Jesus, maybe you need to take another step toward following Jesus. If you're not a follower of Jesus, maybe you need to take a step to follow him. But this invitation of Jesus is not, come on to heaven after you die. It's no, follow me. Follow me in this life, follow me in the next life, and your thirst will be filled.

I'll finish with this. And I've read this in a number of funerals, but it's an appropriate thing to read if you know the back to CS Lewis again, the British author. He also wrote a children's book series that are really great for adults to read called Chronicles of Narnia. And the book is really about these children that go into this fantasy land of Narnia. Aslan is the Christ figure.

He's a lion. There's an evil witch. Aslan eliminates the witch in the end. All right, evil's eliminated, but he's talking to the children who are finally realizing, oh, we're not in the Old World anymore. We're now in the New World.

And this is what Aslan says. He says to them, to these children, there really was a railway accident. Remember how this. The book began? It seemed like there was an accident, but the kids didn't know.

And then Aslan, the Jesus character, said, you, father and your mother and all of you, as he used to call in the Shadowlands, you died.

The term is over. Holidays have begun. The dream is ended. This is the morning.

And then the end of the next couple statements is this. And for us, this is the end of all the stories. And we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them, it was only the beginning of the real story. That's a real story.

All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the COVID and the title page. Now, at last, they were beginning chapter one of the great story Capital G, capital S, which no one on earth has ever read, which goes on forever and ever, in which every chapter is better than the one before. That's New Jerusalem. That's our future. That's our life with Jesus.

And if you want that life, if you love the Jesus who created that, then follow the Jesus now, because that's what he promises. Now we get those foretastes, those shadows of those things, and that's what his invitation is. Come, come. Actually, stand up for a second. I want.

Everybody, stand up for a second. Just stand up and stand as close as you can to the chair behind you. All right? And in a second, I'm gonna just close your eyes. I'm gonna ask everybody just to take a small of a step forward.

Of course, you can't typically step while you have the chair in front of you, but I'm assuming Jesus is invited. Well, we're not assuming. We know he's invited us to come. And maybe there's a step toward this Jesus who created this whole new world of joy. And you know what?

Maybe he's asking you to take a step of trusting him about relationships, about money, about whatever. Maybe there's a step you need to take of letting go of a sin that's holding you back. Or maybe you need to take a step of just following Him. But all of us have a step to take. I'm gonna step forward, so I'm gonna say 1, 2, 3, and just want you to take a small step forward if you're willing to say that, Jesus.

If you don't, nobody's gonna know you're not stepping. You can fake it, I guess, but I'm just saying I want to say 1, 2, 3. And I want you to take a step toward Jesus, who's inviting you to come to him. All right, all right. Just a small step.

One, two, three, step. Jesus, your promise is. He said, come all you who are weary and heavy laden. I'll give you rest. We want rest for our souls.

We want life for our souls. And your promises, fullness of joy for our souls. We will follow you now, why wouldn't we? There's no one like you at all ever. Never will be, never has been.

You are the king of joy. You are the king of justice. You are the king of the elimination of sadness in the world. We follow you. Go ahead and have a seat.

So we finish every Sunday also with taking communion. And I hope you all grabbed it on the way in. We've been doing that during the Revelation series. So the little cup and juice. And Jesus was saying these words the night of incredible trauma for him, but incredible confusion and trauma for the disciples.

He said, every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, I want you to remember me. And he wasn't simply saying, remember all the pain I'm going to go through and it's all your fault. It wasn't. He was. He was like, remember me.

Remember the promises I made. Remember what I told you I could do in your life. Remember the joy I promised. Remember the peace I promised you. He's inviting us to that now.

Cause he's inviting us to that then as well. So here's what I want you to do. Go ahead and take the. Open the bread on the bottom. If you can, tear that off.

Cause Jesus said, every time you eat this bread, he says, is my body broken for you? Every time you eat this bread, remember me. And I'm just gonna ask right now. Remember that he is the king of joy in your life. All right, let's take that bread together.

Now. Go ahead and tear the top part off. And like me, if you can do it without spilling, you'll be good. Right, Jesus? There, let me drink this cup.

You proclaim forgiveness of sins to the whole world.

So as we drink this, you're proclaiming the forgiveness of what God's done in your life and for others that God wants them to follow him. So let's drink together.

So, Jesus, we're grateful. That's an understatement. Grateful for your body, grateful for your blood, grateful for your promises, grateful for your power. And we love you. And as we finish in worship here, I'm gonna also say, too, we have people that will be on the sides in the back with the orange lanyards there to pray for you.

And maybe you need to come to Jesus by coming to them and asking them to pray for you about something. There's no shame in that. There's actually a lot of glory in those kind of things. So maybe that's you. While we're singing, maybe you need to come to Jesus by coming to someone who will pray for you about your heart for Jesus.