Love Hung Bleeding

[0:00] To a lot of people in our culture, Christianity doesn't make any sense. Buddhism makes sense, not necessarily because of believing anything about Buddha, but because things like yoga and meditation help people make it through the week.

[0:17] And in our culture, lots of things of native spirituality make sense, because a lot of people in our culture have a sense that on one hand, while what most grips us is what we can eat, what we can drink, what we can wear, what we can earn, what we can live in, what we can drive, that at the same time there's a sense of mystery in life, and often things like native spirituality can sort of deeply touch us.

[0:42] But for many people in our culture, Christianity doesn't make any sense. How could one person's death save me? We can sort of understand, especially as we gather here today, today with Jim Farherty just having died this week.

[0:58] Many people, I mean I had never met the man, but it was a shock to hear of his death. And we can understand maybe how a death can shock us or touch us, even a death of someone who happened long before we were born.

[1:14] But for many people in our culture, the idea that one man's death, especially a man's death so long ago, could have any particular impact on me, or any particular relevance for me, or that it could save me, just doesn't really make any sense whatsoever.

[1:33] And even this idea which Christians would talk about that Jesus is sinless, often becomes a great puzzle to people in our culture, and often if we're honest, to people in the pews, we don't have pews, in seats in churches.

[1:48] Because I was just reading the story of a Muslim man who converted to Christianity. He spoke very powerfully about the great conundrum that the sinlessness of Jesus causes many people.

[2:04] If Jesus was sinless and perfect, why didn't God hear his prayers? Why did God allow Jesus to die if Jesus was sinless? But for many people in our culture, the idea of Jesus being sinless is something that keeps Jesus far from us at arm's length, rather than making Jesus approachable, and someone that we can have as a friend, or confide in, or talk to.

[2:28] The sinlessness of Jesus pushes him far, far away, so that there are many people in our country, and many people maybe even in churches, that the fundamental story of Jesus, the fundamental facts of Jesus are very, very, very deeply puzzling.

[2:44] And often we don't even like to say that out loud, because it just doesn't seem like the right thing to say out loud when you're in church. And maybe your friends won't say it to you face to face, because they don't want to offend you, because they understand that you're a Christian.

[2:58] But for many people in our culture, these central ideas are very, very puzzling. This morning, we're going to look right at these questions. And usually I ask you to get out your Bibles, and that you can still get out your Bible.

[3:15] But really what we're going to do is just look at one very, very famous verse in the Bible. And we're just going to look at it, because this very famous verse touches on these questions, and many other questions, which you and many people in our culture have about the Christian faith.

[3:32] And Andrew, if you could put it up, that would be great. And what I've done is provided an essentially literal translation of the verse.

[3:43] So some of you might have memorized it, maybe you've memorized it in the King James Version, or memorized it in the NIV or the ESV. And I thought what I would just do is I'd sort of mess with all your heads and provide an essentially literal translation, because it's actually very beautiful.

[3:59] In the original translation, it begins and ends with Jesus. And so there's sort of a very specific form in it. And so what we're going to do is we're going to look at this, because it touches on many of these questions and others.

[4:13] So it would be a great help to me if you all would just read this with me at this time. The one who knew not sin, for us God made sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

[4:26] Let's just say it again. The one who knew not sin, for us God made sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

[4:38] Now you see, right off the bat, the text begins with something which Muslims find profoundly confusing. In fact, actually they will use these types of things, a verse like this to show that Jesus could not possibly have died on the cross.

[4:52] That if in fact they have maybe an easy time believing that Jesus could be such an exalted person, they just have a very hard time believing that anybody who's so exalted could possibly die on the cross.

[5:03] And as I said for others, the idea that Jesus is the one who knew not sin is deeply confusing. It just seems to make Jesus very, very differently, very, very distant.

[5:18] The one who knew not sin. Well, here's what I want to suggest. Andrew, if you could put up the first point, and then I'll try to explain it. Believe it or not, the sinlessness of Jesus means that no one can identify with you and me as deeply as he can.

[5:37] I learned this, actually, as I was thinking about arguments in favor of abortion. I was listening to arguments in favor of abortion, and it one day struck me.

[5:49] The sinlessness of Jesus means that no one can identify with you and me as deeply as he can. Now, you see, part of the problem with this text for Christians is that we think of it a little bit like math.

[6:06] Some people are really, really, really, really, really good at math. And maybe you're a little bit different, but I've often found that people who are really, really, really, really, really, really good at math aren't often very helpful to people.

[6:20] They can't help people who are very bad at math. Because for people who are very, very good at math, they just look, it's obvious. Like, you just look at it, it's obvious.

[6:33] How can you not get it? And to the person who doesn't get math, they just go, how can you get that? Nothing's obvious about that. And sometimes for a person who's really good at math and another person who can't do math, the gap is so big they can't even talk to each other.

[6:48] And so for many people, when we think of Jesus' sinlessness, we just think, well, gosh, how on earth can you relate to me? Like, he just sort of, I mean, it's almost as if Jesus is just, like, made out of, I don't know, you know, that, what's that made-up metal that Wolverine has that's, you know, the hardest thing?

[7:07] Yeah, there you go. I like superheroes, but I'm not a superhero geek, okay? Just so you're clear. Can't often remember all this stuff. So, you know, it's as if Jesus is just, it doesn't even touch him.

[7:18] He's just so completely and utterly immune from sin. But this text is very, very, very, very, very, very, very powerful. Remember that the verse said, the one who knew not sin, for us God made sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

[7:37] And in the original language, when it says knew not, it's really implying, and it's a bit of a tricky thing because it's implying for people who hear it that they sort of have an understanding of how the Bible talks about knowledge.

[7:52] It's, in fact, the very, very same word. When I talk about, I'll just be, I have to use this, but when I talk about sex in church or in other settings with Christians, and I want to talk about sexual intercourse, I use the biblical phrase that you're not to know a man or a woman outside of marriage.

[8:15] And that's the way the Bible talks about it. And the Bible talks about a certain type of knowing that's, in a sense, a deeply personal knowing. It's a knowing that's connected to, in a sense, a coming together of the truth, like an entering into.

[8:31] It's something comprehensive. It's something total. It's something that has an idea almost of covenant or communion or something unitive that brings something together.

[8:42] And so that is the way the Bible describes sexual intercourse, as knowing one. And that's that same idea up in the Bible verse. Sorry, I keep pointing to it.

[8:53] It's my point, not the Bible verse. Could you put the point back up, the Bible text back up? So I keep, there you go. But the one who knew not sin, it's like this. I know that there's, I don't know how many women there are here today.

[9:06] I don't know, maybe there's 70 women here. I know there's 70 women here. But I only know Louise. And that's the same type of sense here that is being used of Jesus.

[9:18] It's not saying that he doesn't know that there's sin in the world. It's not saying he doesn't know that sin and evil exists. It's saying that he knows all about sin, but he never knew sin, in a sense, in the way that I know Louise and Louise knows me.

[9:37] That he never committed sin and had that act in the sense of unity with sin. That's far from him. That's what his sinlessness means. Not that he was never tempted.

[9:49] He was. Now, some of you might be saying, George, how on earth does abortion, the argument for abortion, help you understand this text? Well, what's one of the main arguments for abortion?

[10:01] One of the main arguments for abortion is that the fetus can't possibly be human. Why can't the fetus possibly be human? Well, the fetus can't possibly be human. The fetus has no inner life.

[10:13] The fetus doesn't make choices. The fetus doesn't have any type of that struggle which we connect so powerfully with being human.

[10:26] It's the same type of argument that goes on for euthanasia, for people maybe who enter into Alzheimer's. Is it their ability to make moral choices? I mean, the whole realm of choices in inner life, it's very, very hard.

[10:38] It's a moral, there's moral things. Should I think this? What should I think? Should I plan for this? What should I not plan for? What should I move towards? What should I avoid? It all ultimately has a powerful moral component to it.

[10:53] And so if we know that Jesus actually understood moral choice and he experienced moral choice and he experienced the chance of options, then we start to understand that, in fact, this idea, the one who knew not sin, if we start to understand that, in fact, the sinlessness of Jesus means that no one can identify with you and me as deeply as he can, it becomes like this.

[11:17] Let's say I'm going out on a car drive with you to Toronto and you and I both know somebody in common and I have a piece of really juicy gossip on someone that we both know and neither of us like this person.

[11:34] And I know some gossip about them. And if I tell you this gossip, and if I tell you this gossip in the right way, it'll make this person look really, really bad.

[11:47] And both of us will have a good time with each other, relishing how much we dislike them. Now, how long could you go in that car ride without telling the gossip?

[11:58] Some of you would say, George, like, the second I put on the seatbelt, it's going to come right out. And some of you might say, well, you know, maybe for some of us it's five seconds, five minutes, 15 minutes, three hours.

[12:20] Maybe gossip's not your thing. It would be an easy thing. You can pick your own sin. But only the person who never gives in.

[12:32] So the person who goes an hour before they give in to the gossip, they have a moral life, an internal interior life that understands the full strength of the temptation.

[12:44] And they're able to see how the temptation comes at them this way. And then it comes at them this way. And then it comes at them this way. And then it sort of lies dormant. And then it jumps out at them all again. And they know that inner life, that inner experience for a full hour.

[12:58] But unless you have the ability to resist that temptation until the temptation no longer tempts you at all. And maybe that's going to be four hours.

[13:08] Maybe it's going to be four years. Maybe it's going to be 40 years. I don't know how long it is. But until you actually, it's only the person who understands the full power of the temptation and all of the different permutations and combinations it takes and never succumbs to it that really understands it.

[13:27] They live a far more deeply human experience than those of us who just give in to the temptation really quickly.

[13:38] In fact, actually, don't we usually think that people who give in to temptation instantly, what do we think they are? Shallow. Isn't that what we think they are?

[13:49] Shallow. What is it that we feel bad about ourselves if we give in to the temptation just like that? We worry that we're shallow. So in fact, this text, the one who knew not sin, actually opens up to us that rather than meaning that Jesus cannot identify with us, there is no one who can identify with you more than Jesus.

[14:13] That's why there's been such great hymns as what a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to him in prayer.

[14:27] The sinlessness of Jesus means that no one can identify with you and me as deeply as he can. Let's say this together. Nope. Oh, yeah. Sorry. There's the point. Go back to the scripture.

[14:39] Let's say this together. The one who knew not sin, for us God made sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. But some of you might say, George, okay, one man.

[14:53] How can what happens to one man have any real bearing upon me? Once again, when I was reading this book on the Muslim who became a Christian, that was a very, very, very deep problem for him.

[15:11] How can it be that what happens to one man could possibly matter to him in terms of any type of eternal consequences? It comes up in this verse.

[15:25] The one who knew not sin, for us, for us God made. For us God. I mean, it's essentially literal translation, but I'm capturing that for some reason in the text, there's this sense that God makes Jesus a particular person with a particular status, so that what he does can be done for us.

[15:50] If you put up the second point, Michael or Rebecca, that would be great. Jesus is the only person who could possibly represent you and me and every person.

[16:02] That's what this text is teaching. That Jesus is the only person who could possibly represent you and me and every person. When the Bible says, the one who knew not sin, for us God made sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

[16:17] And that's what it's declaring. It's declaring something which is all the way through the Bible, that Jesus is the only person who could possibly represent you and me and every person.

[16:28] Unless, again, we might wonder how on earth this could possibly be. Like, on one level, we have a bit of an understanding of representation, that how one person represents us makes a difference. I think it's Mickey...

[16:40] Who was it? The famous actor who just died this week. I was meant to look... Mickey Rooney. He just died this week, 93. Ten decades in show business. And in one article, I said that his net worth upon his death was $18,000.

[16:57] How on earth could one be in Hollywood for ten decades and die with a net worth of 18 grand? It's because one of his children who represented him ruined him financially.

[17:09] If the newspaper accounts are correct. Which we're just assuming for a moment they are. Maybe they're not. Some of us have been in the press at times and papers don't always get it right. Okay?

[17:20] So... But, you know, on one level we have this sense that, you know, what happens, you know, for a mother or a father in a family that they represent in a sense the family and they have a representative function and leadership function in a family, then it makes a difference.

[17:35] And we can understand how a head of state represents a country. The president or the head of state of China or the head of state of India in a sense represents over a billion people.

[17:47] And I'm not trying... I'm not denigrating the head of state of China or the head of state of India at all by saying on one level they can represent a billion people. But on the other hand, I mean, I don't know how many people in China or India would be happy if they died or wouldn't even know if they died or...

[18:08] Like, they're just sort of just mere human beings. But we understand that it is possible in a very, very powerful way for one person to have this representative power over many.

[18:24] You've heard this illustration before, but it's a very, very good illustration. If terrorists were to take over Wembley Stadium when it was completely and utterly full and threatened to blow up a bomb killing everybody if their grants and demands weren't met, if I phoned them up and said, if you let all 100 and whatever it is, 15,000 people go free, I'll give you my life to let the 115,000 go free, they would laugh at me.

[18:50] But if the Queen of England called up the terrorists and said, if I come into the stadium and sit on the bomb, will you let the 115,000 go free?

[19:06] The terrorists would believe that they had gotten the greatest deal in the world. Because not only would they now think that they have... They've traded 115,000 for the Queen of England, and they would understand that all of England is now held captive.

[19:23] And given the number of people who are English and people of English heritage throughout the whole world, it might very well be that a billion people would be gripped by this offer and feel that they themselves were on that bomb.

[19:37] The Queen of England. What this Bible is saying is that God makes Jesus that one who can represent us.

[19:51] I mean, how great can that not possibly be? I mean, on one level, the Queen of England is... I mean, you know, if you're being very, very cynical, I don't mean to offend the monarchists here, but you might just say, well, you know, she had a daddy and a daddy and a daddy and a daddy, and they just were a whole pile of barons, and they won a sort of a war, and it goes back to others, and it's just a whole pile of drunk guys who fought.

[20:14] I'm not offending the monarchists, okay? But it just happens to end up being Queen Elizabeth, who most people like because she's really sweet, even people who aren't monarchists. Monarchists. You know, and... But how...

[20:27] And, you know, for the President of the United States, I mean, he just won an election, and right now his approval rating is very low, but it would still be true of him. But how much greater would it be? Doesn't it make sense that it could be possible that God would identify one person to represent all humanity?

[20:42] If we can understand that the Queen of England could, in a sense, represent all of England by her offer, can't we see that God could do that with this person, Jesus? And if he does it with Jesus, what possibly better person could it be than one, as we saw earlier when it says, God, the one who knew not sin for us, God made sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

[21:07] Who could possibly better represent us than one that God chooses, and one who can identify with us? Because, to be honest, how much can the Queen of England identify with many people in England?

[21:23] I'm not trying to... Paula, I don't want to offend monarchists, I really don't. But you understand, who better to represent us than one that God chooses, and one who knows human experience so deeply, so that every human being, he can identify with them?

[21:40] That's why I say that Jesus is the only person who could possibly represent you and me and every person.

[21:53] Let's say the verse together again. The one who knew not sin, for us God made sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

[22:05] Some of you might say, okay, George, so maybe I understand that Jesus, his sinlessness, actually isn't a matter of keeping him distant from me, and sort of I can understand how this idea of representation, that maybe one man, what happens to him, could have an implication for me, that maybe he could represent me, and not just that he could represent every person.

[22:32] But how is it possible, and how is it fair, that God would just pick this one guy, and this one guy has to die for me? Like, how is that possibly fair? If you look at the verse again, the one who knew not sin, for us, what does it say?

[22:51] God made sin. That's this idea of substitution. In fact, if you put up the point here, we'll see this. As he hung upon the cross, bleeding and dying, Jesus was the substitute.

[23:09] That's what this verse is teaching, that as he hung upon the cross, bleeding and dying, Jesus was the substitute. Those of you who come to this church know that I like movies and stuff like that, and my wife and I have been watching a television show from one of the cable channels.

[23:26] I think it's A&E, and it's Longmire, and it's about a sheriff in modern-day Wyoming. And in, spoiler alert, okay, spoiler alert if you're watching it.

[23:39] I won't tell you the episode, but there's a bit of a spoiler alert, and if you're, so hopefully I haven't, I don't ruin a particular episode for you. But it was very, very interesting. It's the most popular show on this particular cable channel, and this, one of the episodes has this very, very powerful episode where a woman gets hit by a driver and left for dead.

[24:06] It's a hit and run. And it's very obvious, eventually, that the, that this young man is the one behind the wheel. But then, in fact, in fact, actually, it's the sheriff, Longmire's daughter, who's hit.

[24:21] And she's close to death. So the young man is facing a whole host of different charges. In fact, there's a powerful scene where Longmire throws the young man in jail.

[24:36] He lifts off all the charges against him, and then as he's leaving, he says to his deputies, any other charge you can think of, put it against him. Then, sort of very soon on in the show, the father of the young man comes, and his face is all banged up and beat up.

[24:53] And the father's a drunk, and he says that he's behind the wheel, that he was the one behind the wheel, that his son was innocent, that he had forced his son to drive. It's a very powerful interchange between the sheriff and this father.

[25:09] and at the end of it, the sheriff himself is struggling with his own guilt about his relationship with his daughter and how he had left her alone and not cared for her like he should have.

[25:27] And he brings the father in of the young guy, and he puts him in jail. And he says to his deputies who object to let the young man go free because he said the dad was the one behind the wheel.

[25:44] Because this dad had begged. He said, I've ruined my life. I've ruined my life. Let me go to jail for my son. And Longmire does it.

[25:59] The man goes to jail, and the son goes free. And later on in the episode, and this is where, you know, part of our culture, there's this sense that on one hand we understand that we're gripped by what we can eat, what we can drink, what we can buy, what we can ride, what we can wear, what we can live in, what we can earn, and we're gripped by all that.

[26:19] But at the same time, there's a very powerful part of our culture that understands there's something mystical and that there's something more. And in this particular episode, the sheriff ends up going through an Indian ritual which causes him great pain in the hope that his suffering will allow the great goddess to heal his daughter.

[26:41] And that's where the spoiler alerts will end. But it's a very, very fascinating idea that this, the most popular series on this particular cable channel that deeply embedded in it is this sense of the appropriateness of substitution.

[27:00] And when the Bible here says that the one who knew not sin for us, God made sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him, the Bible is teaching that not only if Jesus actually can identify with us very, very deeply, more deeply than any other human being, even the person with the closest marriage, even the person with the closest friend, even the person that had the greatest mom in the world, Jesus can identify with you far more closely and deeply than any other person.

[27:31] And that Jesus is the one who can truly and utterly properly represent us. That there's both the fact that God would set up a person that could represent human beings and this powerful act of identification that there's no one better qualified to represent us than Jesus is.

[27:47] That Jesus is the one who acts. When he's dying upon the cross, he's dying as an act of substitution. You see, Jesus doesn't do this because he's forced to by God.

[28:06] But just as in the illustration that I gave that this man who was a drunk and yet still loved his son out of love would willingly pay the penalty of a crime, of a whole list of crimes for his son out of love for his son and the sheriff would go through this torturous experience out of love for his daughter.

[28:27] We're so used to people with political power and prestige and representative power to not care about the little guy and the little gal. It's mind-boggling for us to think that one who could represent us and could identify with us would also love us and would love us so deeply and would love us so deeply that he would willingly take our place.

[28:49] In our culture, it's very, very common. And if you were to go to the local coffee shops or the local bars or ask around your work, it's very common now for us in our culture to have some type of idea of karma.

[29:01] But when we think about karma, we think about it in a very intermittent way. We think about it more in, well, like this one particular time I was driving out in the country and I was behind a very, very, very, very frustrating driver.

[29:15] The speed limit was 80 and they were always driving 70. But as soon as they came to a flat piece of road where you could pass and there were passing lanes, they sped up to 115 and I couldn't pass them.

[29:29] That was so frustrating for me. And then we come into this little tiny hole-in-the-wall community and the speed limit went from 80 to 40 and they kept going 70 and a cop pulled them over and gave them a ticket.

[29:44] I'll confess later on a sin yet again that that made me happy. There was a sense of divine justice in that as I tootled past them going 50.

[30:04] Afterwards, I would be able to go far faster. I had lived in the country for a while. I knew that rural police often hide in such spots to give people tickets. So, you know, we have, but what if, what if this idea that we usually just throw out this idea of karma or what goes around comes around or something like that in a particular time when we've been wrong, but what if something like that is true?

[30:28] What if something like that is possibly true? And what if it's not just something that is just intermittent and then all the other times we can sort of forget about it and it only happens sort of when there's these sort of big things, but what if there's something like that that's true?

[30:45] And what if something like that that's true and it goes on with what we think in our head and what we feel in our heart and what we do with our bodies and what we do when nobody's looking and how we think about people all the time and our moral evaluations and what if in a sense there's something like karma which is true in all of that that will one day come out and there has to be some type of price that's paid and on one level we understand that there's some sense every person who understands something of what we now in our culture call karma we understand that there's this sense of wrongdoing and a price to be paid and Christians say that sense that you have is a window into what truly is real that your own self-centeredness my own self-centeredness and pride is blinding me to and keeping distant from me but the Bible is very very clear eyed and God is very clear eyed and so as he hung upon the cross bleeding and dying

[31:48] Jesus was the substitute he is the one who takes into himself takes our place now some of you might say okay George that's uh okay let's put the verse up again say it together the one who knew not sin for us God made sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him now some of you might say okay George even if something like that was to happen you know like look at that Longmire episode okay so the drunk dad he takes the place of the son that's all very good the son goes free the son still has a broken arm still has a messed up life all those things go on you know Longmire and his daughter whatever happened she still has all the you know she's still unemployed she has all these things that are messed up so even if Jesus does something like that for me where does that leave me that verse again the one who knew not sin for us God made sin what that we might become the righteousness of God in him here's what the

[32:49] Bible's teaching as he hung upon the cross bleeding and dying Jesus is not just offering to take our place he is offering to trade places with you and me as he hung upon the cross bleeding and dying Jesus is not just offering to take our place he is offering to trade places with you and me imagine that they came up with a cure for cancer but the problem with the cure for cancer is that it had to be a family member and they could take the cancer out of the person with the cancer and if they had a person who was completely healthy they would put the cancer into that person and that person's health would go back into the person who had cancer so the one who originally had cancer would now have the healthy person's health and the healthy person would now have that cancer if they ever developed such a cure for cancer and one of my grandchildren had cancer the only problem would be my wife and I would arm wrestle each other as to who would get to have the cancer who would take on the cancer and give their health that would be the only argument in our family what we see with Jesus is something like that that he that when we talk about

[34:34] Jesus being our substitute it's not just feelings that's involved that Jesus in the cross it's an actual offer of exchange the sinless one with his perfect relationship with the father an unbroken communion with the father that he dies on the cross and he willingly says George not only will I take upon yourself myself all the karma that should come upon you I'm willing to trade places with you that Jesus God will relate to you George as if you are me the Bible uses words of well in the scripture text that we've been looking at again and again and again the one who knew not sin for us God made sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him there's this offer of an exchange of a trading of places that's why what happens on the cross is not like what happened on that

[35:35] Longmire show which just leaves people having been substituted but still stuck with their lives that on the cross there's this offer for us not only to have that karma dealt with but to have a new status a new identity a new destiny a new relationship with God that we have not earned that we could not possibly earn and that we do not deserve and could not possibly ever deserve and Jesus does it because he loves you and me not as abstractions but as who we really are that there is not a single person on the planet who could say to Jesus Jesus you can't possibly offer that do you know what I've done in my life do you know how I think do you know what goes on in my between these these two ears and behind the eyeballs do you know what goes on in my heart do you know my history and for every one of us

[36:37] Jesus says yes I do I know all that and still it's because I love I know and I know I know what you've been through and I know those things that really you've just been a victim but I know those things that you have delighted in that were wrong and were in a sense karma really I know all of that where the karma is deserved and still I will take your place and still I will offer to trade places with you put up the verse again say it with me the one who knew not sin for us God made sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him the Christian life begins when we move from saying to other people Jesus is the savior to saying to Jesus be my savior that's how the Christian life really is marked from being able to say Christians say that

[37:39] Jesus is the savior to maybe being able to say Jesus is the savior to saying to Jesus to saying to God Jesus be my savior be my substitute I accept that offer of exchange be my great exchange be my savior that's how the Christian life begins and we live the whole Christian life gripped by that and shaped by that that's why the mission statement of this church increasingly is making disciples gripped by the gospel living for the glory of God to understand that this great act of identification and representation and substitution and exchange gives me this new status and this new identity and as this truth grips me well then the idea of identifying with the weak or the poor makes sense the idea of identifying with those who are victims makes sense the idea of standing in the gap to represent makes sense the idea of doing some act of offering of giving of our money or of our time as an act of substitution or exchange that the one who has no money that we would give that money as an act of substitution and exchange that begins to make sense as the gospel grips us it changes our life but it begins

[39:09] I put it here I couldn't think of a point if you could put the final point I couldn't think of a way to describe this in a simple line so I thought I would just go with the Bible says be in him be in Jesus please stand maybe some of you God has been sort of zeroing in on you and you can feel his finger upon you and you've never made that move of going from Jesus is what Christians say is the savior to Jesus is the savior saying Jesus be my savior be my substitution be my exchange and maybe the finger of God is upon you this morning the Holy Spirit is upon you urging you to say that to Jesus and there's no better time than right now today in this place to say that to make that say that to Jesus there's no better time than right now won't be better when you finish the degree won't be better when you paid off the mortgage won't be better when you moved into the condo no better time than right now and there's nothing magical about my words but

[40:21] I'm going to say it's actually a word from within the bulletin the groin and grace section I'm going to say slowly a prayer and if the finger of God the Holy Spirit is upon you I'll say a very short fragment and there'll be a period of silence I invite you you don't have to say it out loud it's just a transaction between you and Jesus all I'm doing is helping put into words what the Holy Spirit is urging you to say and there's no better time than right now to do it and just do it silently I'll leave time and I urge you I beseech you I implore you to do that Jesus you are the sinless one you tasted every temptation to its full strength without giving in to the temptation you represented me on the cross you died in my place you traded places with me thank you be my savior

[41:43] I want to be in you today and forever make me your disciple gripped by this gospel living for your glory amen just continuing by in our heads in prayer father we thank you so much for Jesus we thank you for what he did upon us in the cross we ask father for everyone here who is yours that you would make us disciples gripped by the gospel living for your glory and father if there are any here today who gave their lives to Jesus for the first time I ask that your Holy Spirit would fall mightily upon them mightily upon them in a deep way drawing them close to Jesus Jesus close to them and all this I ask in the name of Jesus your son and our savior amen