- Amen. I'd like to ask all of you up here and downstairs to go ahead and take your notes out that you received. Also a pen, you might wanna write down some notes today. And also, grab a Bible. You can use your electronic version, the one your brought in here, or the one in the seat rack in front of you. And I want you to turn to Genesis chapter three. It's at the beginning of your Bible. Everybody needs to go there 'cause we're gonna dive into that passage today as we talk about another unshakable truth. God has given us truths that we can look at our world through, and they act like lenses as we've talked about, so that we can see clearly the truth of who He is and who we are. And that is certainly the case with today's unshakable truth. It allows us to see our world with the right perspective. Several years ago, we had just moved to Minnesota from California. And I remember I was sitting on the stairs right as you walk in to our house, you can see them. I was sitting there playing with my young daughter. She wasn't very old at that point in time. And we were doing all kinds of stuff. I can't remember exactly what we were doing, but I certainly remember what she said. In the midst of fun, she looked up at me and she goes, "Daddy, you're not in charge of everything. "I am." Where did this come from? I've given her life, we've given her food, we've feed her, we let her sleep in our house without paying any rent whatsoever, we wash her clothes. A matter of fact, I placed her in a home, I didn't own the home, but I placed her in a home, we brought her to life and put her in a home 16 blocks from the ocean in California. I mean, you couldn't of had a better life. And this is what I get? Now, you all know what it's like to bring home a beautiful little child whether you are a parent or a grandparent. You bring home this innocent little child and you stare at it for hours on end. And it's such joy and wonder, but as that child continues to grow, you feel this power grab going on in your house, right? Where you feel like you've given birth to a Trojan horse. I was in Chicago a couple weeks ago. And I was sitting in my sister's house as she was watching my niece's daughter. And I had completely forgotten what it really was like to be in a home with a terrible two. Major meltdown was going on. And I was watching this, she was there, the child was just going off. And my dad was there and my sister has this crazy parrot in the house. And this parrot talks and whistles and was screeching. Hates every person but my sister. I mean it's obnoxious. And at that moment, what I should've done was take the bird out of the cage, have a sacrifice on the altar, and exercise this child demon. Come out! 'Cause that's what it's like. And we wonder where did this come from? You know, what has happened here? And it really doesn't change. They're not doing anything different because it's who they are. And they are who they are because of what we're gonna talk about today. You look at history, you look at life, we wonder why the world got to where it is with all of the evil, and all of the pain, and all of the chaos. And it never seems to change. And it's at the heart of what we're gonna talk about today. Even if you're someone who's investigating a relationship with Jesus Christ and you've never fully embraced the package yet as to what we talk about, you at least know deep inside when you've crossed some form of a moral boundary. And it has everything to do with what we're gonna look at today. It's the unmistakable consequence of sin. So how did it begin? Well let's look back to the book of beginnings and let's observe the perfect world. In Genesis chapter two, the only two perfect chapters in the entire Bible are found right here. Because after Genesis one and two, everything falls apart. But it was a perfect world. Now, you're looking down at Genesis chapter three, just move your eyes up or over to the two verses right before you enter into chapter three and we'll begin to uncover at least a little bit of what this world looked like. God created the heavens and the earth. He placed Adam and Eve in a perfect world, a perfect garden. And it's summarized in verse 24 and 25 of chapter two. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. God performed this wedding ceremony, they came together in the permanent covenant bond of a marriage relationship. Don't miss verse 25 'cause this is the verse where it's amazing what happened. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. That is as graphic a picture as you can get to of the intimate relationship that existed between God and mankind, Adam and Eve, in one another. There was total trust. There was total vulnerability. There was nothing between them at all. They lived in the goodness of God. It was a perfect world that existed because of what happened there. And we, meaning Adam and Eve, our descendants, humanity at that time, but it was Adam and Eve had the freedom to make choices and fully trust. It was an authentic love relationship. And God did not create robots, He created individuals in His image as we've talked about over the last two weeks which means they bore the image of relationship and God created them and created us, in humanity, to live within a loving, perfect relationship whereby He would shower us with His goodness and His grace, but it was a dependent relationship upon Him, but it was voluntary. There was a choice. You see for love to be authentic and real, there has to be a voluntary choice. Where did that come from? Well if you'll book back up into chapter two and locate verse 15, you'll see the choice that God gave. Because if authentic love was to be real, there had to be a choice. There is definitely a risk here so let's read about it. The Lord God took the man and out him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden." Stop there just for second because we're gonna come back in just a few moments and show you the opposite. God started out with good. God started out in a relationship of trust whereby they would depend upon Him and He would give them all the good things that their heart would desire. He would love on them, it would be a perfect relationship. However, they had to choose to stay in that relationship. "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "you shall not eat for in that day that you eat of it, "you shall surely die." There was a choice. They could choose to stay in this authentic relationship. God had expressed His love and His goodness towards them. They knew they could trust Him in this dependable relationship. And as long as they stayed there, they would experience His wonder and His grace. They had no idea what death was, they had no idea of any of that stuff over there. He was protecting them, they would only experience good. Now remember, God was not holding out on them. He was not holding out on anything good. He was actually protecting them from something else. And as they depended, they would find full joy, and fulfillment, and wonder. And we experience life and joy together in relationship with God. It was amazing what took place. His love would come and there would be peace, and joy, and fulfillment. They would know what was best for them because God the Creator knew what was best for them. You know, God is jealous. He's not jealous because He's some egomaniac. He's jealous because He wants you as His creation to experience all the good, and the wonder, and the joy of finding fulfillment in Him. That's why He's jealous. He doesn't want you to experience the pain that life can bring because of sin. But in this perfect world, they knew none of that. That a relationship with one another, no sin was between the two of them and that's why they able to unselfishly focus on others in loving relationships. Sin had never come between them. There was full intimacy. There was full disclosure. They would experience life as it was meant to be. However, once we turn to chapter three, we end up with this temptation that was offered. So now if you look down at verse one, let's work our way through what it says. Now the serpent, notice was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. That gives you an idea of what's coming. There's something here that's not right. And he said to the woman, "Did God actually say," now notice this. "You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?" How did God start? God started with you may eat. There were good things that He started with, but satan can only produce chaos and doubt. And he starts with getting her to begin to doubt the very goodness of God. God had never held out anything good from them, but satan has already put. So if you've ever wondered where did the first doubt come in human history, right here. There it is. Everything comes back here. And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden," so she got that part right. "But God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree "that is in the midst of the garden," notice, "Neither shall you touch it lest you die." Now she added to God's command. She added onto it. So she's already doubting God's holding back on me. Wait a minute. He says I can't do something and now she starts adding to it. So you get the flavor of what's happening here. All of a sudden, instead of looking at God as a gracious God who's given you all gifts, now all of a sudden it's like well, wait a minute. God's holding back on me. Did God ever say this? No. She had her facts wrong. She and Adam could've carved Adam plus Eve on the tree and drew a heart around it, had a lot of fun, danced around it and enjoyed life. They could've climbed in that tree, they could've done a number of things. They just couldn't eat. And all of a sudden, and here's what it says. But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die." A blatant lie. "For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be "opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil." So now all of a sudden, he completely denies that they would die. And she's already doubting who God is. She's doubting His goodness. And this creature that she was supposed to with Adam rule over, she was now listening to. Do you notice the order was completely reversed? She's subjecting herself to the very creature that she should rule over. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. And then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themself loin cloths. Now notice, Adam was right there. Adam should have been reasoning with the serpent and should have put him in his place. Adam knew the truth and somehow there was a gap between what he communicated to her and what she said to the serpent. The truth was gone. See this is not only the chapter where you find the first doubt. If you've ever wondered about where on earth did we end up in our culture with this debate about truth, objective truth versus subjective truth. Right here is where it began. Because all of a sudden, satan comes to her and says, "You can determine this." I mean think about it this way. They were already like God in terms of being created in His image. Not a totally, you know, with all of His attributes, we've talked about that. But they already had that. So what was he doing? He was offering them something more. Some new spiritual level or perhaps even divinity, and they wanted something more. And therefore, they decided to make a choice to no longer depend upon the God that would give them goodness, they would become independent and trust themselves, and determine truth without accountability. That's why this issue is so important. Because they would no longer go to the good God that created them. We were always designed to live in dependence upon Him. They would now take upon themselves the independence of determining truth. And it is subjective. The reason why is because you and I are flawed human beings and we can never determine truth because every time we try and figure out what truth is, we are looking at our world through a sinful, subjective lens. That's why it never works. Why is it that we continue to have war? Why is it we continue to have chaos? Why is it that we have this endless conflict in Washington D.C.? It's driving me absolutely nuts. Why is it we have stuff going on in our own personal lives? Why is it that a little beautiful baby all of a sudden shows up like a Trojan horse in my life? It all goes back to this issue and truth is right at the center of it. So all of a sudden, their eyes are opened. There's more than meets the eye there, k? No pun intended. They were already naked, okay? This is nothing new, but they saw themselves differently. What he's telling us is that they for the first time in their life felt vulnerable. They felt like wait a minute, something's wrong here. And when it says their eyes were opened, it means that their nature was changed. All of a sudden something happened so that they were fearful. You see the idea is that when sin comes into our lives in this selfish living, it doesn't just mean that I can hurt you, it means that I will fear that you will hurt me. And that's a real problem. And all of a sudden, she got all the information wrong. And when we don't look to an objective standard outside of our flawed self, we cannot see clearly the word in which we live. Evil was made to look good. The fruit wasn't rotten. And that's the way sin always is. It always looks good to us. We always want more. And their eyes were open, their nature was changed. And all of a sudden, they would know good and evil because now they would taste and experience evil and because it changed their nature, they would never be the same again. There was death, there was separation. Yes they would experience physical death. Yes as we'll see in a second there's a separation because that's the essence of death between them and God, but there's a separation between the two of them. And notice this, there is a total separation from the life that they once had. Total separation. They were kicked out of the garden. So there was a separation from this life of experiencing only goodness and God's grace where He would withhold nothing good from them and now they've actually tasted independence and tasted sin, and they would never be the same again. Last year, my daughter was hiking out in Virginia with a group of friends. And all of a sudden, a mountain lion began to track them. They didn't know exactly what it was at first, climbed up in the tree, they heard the sound. And she immediately said I think we just got tracked by a mountain lion or we saw one. And so she texted the sound and sure enough it was a mountain lion. Now we've all heard stories of people hiking in Colorado and the mountian lion comes and kills them and eats them, when that happens with a mountain lion or with a bear, you have to put the animal down. And the reason is because they've tasted human flesh and they'll never be the same again. They see you as prey. What I wanted to do this morning, I just couldn't pull it off. I wish I could have got stove up here. And I apologize to all the vegans in the room. But I wanted to have bacon frying when you walked in this morning. And for those of you that have tasted bacon, you'll never be the same again. Right? You smell it and what happens in your mouth? You drool like my dog. Right? Because you've tasted it. And you'll never be the same again. And therefore, they ended up in this broken world. Don't miss this. Sin is independence. That's what it means at its heart. The I in the middle of sin, it means independence. The I is about me. It's about me wanting to call the shots in my life even though God has the right to rule and I'm His creation and I am most satisfied when I live according to His ways depending upon Him. But when I run over here and I seek to live an independent life because I think I know what's best, I think I know what will make me happy. Have it your way, you know? I did it my way. Whatever song you wanna fill in there. Bad things begin to happen because we start buying into the lie of subjective truth. We buy into the lie that somehow we can determine life on our own. We can find happiness, but we were never meant to live independent lives disconnected from God and His ways. And it's not because He's jealous and an egomaniac. And it's not because He's withholding from us, it's because He's trying to give us everything He created for us to experience. Life, and meaning, and purpose in Him. Flip the whole equation around. But we choose independence. So we jump outta this and we jump right into 2019 in this world. And that's why your mom and dad never sat you down and said today, I'm going to teach you how to sass. They never sat you down and said today I'm going to teach you so that when you go to school and you play in the sandbox, you will steal the toy from the other boy so you will make him cry. What parent's ever done that? But your kid comes home and does it and you did it. We all do it because we live in a broken world. And it doesn't change when we get older. We always look at the big stuff. You know, it comes down to just always wanting something else. I remember this summer I was gazing upon my neighbor's beautiful green yard. And I was coveting big time. And I thought, I got a lousy yard. I go to Fleet Farm and I get stripes all over my yard when I put the, you know, stuff down or whatever. Looks like a football field. And theirs is so wonderful because they hire, you know, and then I find out the dollar sign behind it and I said forget it. I'm doing it Fleet Farm. I'll have stripes. The squirrels can play football or whatever. But you always want something more. And you know, in real life, here's one that I can touch on a little bit because it's right in the midst of our culture. And please hear me, I'm talking about the abuse of this. Lynette and I had a conversation. Lynette is my wonderful beautiful wife, she's right over here. And we had a conversation even Friday about a wonderful couple, believe me they don't go here so you don't have to worry about it. Both of them are working hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of hours a week, a month. Why? So they can make the millions. 'Cause we look at life and we say well I wanna do it my way. God says no there's balance to life. You've got kids to raise. You've got joy that needs to be found. And if all you do is run yourself ragged trying to do everything you possibly can, working multiple jobs. But then I can build a million dollar home and then I can have condo in Florida. And then I can do this and I can do that if I just work a few more hours. And while you're doing that, your life is coming unraveled. You're totally out of balance. Someone else is giving values to your kids and you have no idea what that is and it is ripping you apart. But you just want more. So this broken world consists of this. We lost the freedom to make choices and fully trust. That's what ended up happening. They thought they were exercising freedom. Acting independent. Do you know what they were actually doing? They were placing themselves in bondage because now they would be subject to the penalty of sin and separation, they would surely die and they would also be subject to the power of sin. Freedom is not the choice to do what you want. Freedom is the choice to do what you ought to do. And apart from intervention, the intervention of God in your life, you can't get there. They could before the fall, but we're their descendants and it can never be done again apart from God's influence in your life. And they would experience guilt, they would experience shame. Everything was affected down to the core of who they are. That's why the apostle Paul who wrote this book in the New Testament, Romans 7:18. He says, "For I know that nothing good dwells in me." He's talking about the inner recesses of my life. Not just my actions, but my nature that is in my flesh. There it is. "For I have the desire to do what is right, "but not the ability to carry it out." Freedom is not doing what you want. Freedom is actually doing what you ought to do, but that was gone. It was taken away. Some people say, but wait a minute, can't we make free choices in life? Well yeah, you can make some free choices. Well but can't I do good things? Absolutely. This doesn't mean you're as bad as you possibly can and you can still do good things, but here's the point. When he talks about no good dwelling in me, the standard of goodness isn't me, remember? My trust is subjective. I have to have an outside objective truth to tell me what truth is. I've got to have that lens. Without it, my definition of goodness is limited. That's why people say well, aren't you born good? And we can do good things. I can somehow work my way to heaven. Your whole definition of goodness is wrong. Your subjective truth is wrong. You have to go outside of yourself. And God's standard of goodness is moral perfection. And all of a sudden I realize what a minute, I can do nothing in terms of moral perfection to please God. That's the level of goodness. And then Paul says in chapter three verses 10 through 12. "None is righteous, no not one. "No one understands. "No one seeks for God. "All have turned aside. "Together they have become worthless. "No one does good," there it is again, "Not even one." Every part of my being was affected. My intellect, my mind, my physical body, every part, my emotions, my will. Sin has changed the very fabric of who we are. Jeremiah 17:9 says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? And if I am dead, I can do nothing to bring life back. I can do nothing to reconnect because I'm dead. I'm separated. I'm caught in this cycle. And Isaiah 64:6 says we have all become like one who is unclean and all our righteous deeds, our good works, are like polluted garments because of this sin in us. And we all fade like a leaf and our iniquities like the wind, they take us away. They drive us away. They rule our life. And Paul says elsewhere in Romans 8:8 that in the flesh, we cannot please God. And therefore we experience death and sorrow in a broken relationship with God. He said you will die. You will experience something I never intended for this to happen. You will be kicked out of the garden. There will be separation. Paul summarizes it this way in chapter five verse 12 of Romans. Therefore just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. It reigns. The penalty and the power of sin. How we look at truth, how we determine reality. Our lens is messed up based on the inside. Just look in the mirror and you can see it. Look at our world around us. Ask yourself some deep and meaningful questions. Why is it, if evolution is true, we've never figured this thing out after billions and billions of years. You know why? You're never going to. The answer is here. None of that's true. So you put this lens on and all of a sudden, you realize wait a minute. Ephesians 2:1 tells me and you were dead in your trespasses and sins. No life. No life with anybody. The world is not working right because of this. And guess what? Romans 3:23 says for all have sinned and the idea here is we keep on sinning after our nature. We've tried the bacon and we can't have enough of it. And we fall short of the glory of God and the wages that we receive because of this sin is death. Eternal separation from God. And this is the nature of original sin. And here's what's happened. We've become selfish in our relationships. Remember when we looked at Genesis chapter two and I said don't miss verse 25 where they were naked and not ashamed and then all of sudden in chapter three their eyes were opened, their very nature was changed, they were vulnerable for the first time. Do you see what's going on there? Their very nature was changed. They were fearful. They didn't know anything about death. They had no idea what this was and now they were experiencing it for the first time. That's why in verse eight of chapter three. And they heard this sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. It's the first time they would ever do this. It was a broken relationship. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?" And he said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden "and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself." He saw something was deeply wrong and He said, "Who told you that you were naked?" See they only saw the good. "Have you eaten of the tree if which I commanded you "not to eat?" Well He knew that, He was just bringing the issue up for Adam to take a look at. And the man said, "The woman whom you gave me, "to be with me. "You know, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate." He's starting the blame game. And then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" And the woman said, "The serpent deceived me and I ate." See this is what our pattern has been throughout life. And I want you to notice something here. Before the fall, they had perfect intimacy because sin never came between them. They had a loving relationship, they could fully represent God, and reflect His image completing more accurately the image of God to their world. Once sin enters into that situation, all of a sudden the very image that they were supposed to represent and reflect to their world has been damaged. And this is why satan goes after relationships. This is why satan takes sin and integrates it and tempts us into our relationships whether that's in a marriage or with one another. Because if sin can be inserted within that loving relationship, the trust is gone, you feel you're vulnerable, you can hurt people and you feel like they can hurt you. And as a result of that, you're no longer in a loving relationship and notice this, you're no longer accurately, more fully reflecting and representing the image of God to the world and satan has an end game and the end game for him is not to display the character, the wonder, the goodness, and the grace of God to a world that desperately needs Him. That's why this is such a big deal. This has ramifications beyond your little conflict with your wife. This has monumental, spiritual, universal, historical, consequences. His end game is not just to get you to stop loving your wife or your spouse, his end game is to put a wedge between you so that independently decide what you want to do so that you live your way, not his way. And the moment you do that, you take matters into your own hands thinking it will make you happy. You have put a wedge there and you are no longer accurately representing the very image of God, goodness, and grace, and mercy. But, there is hope. There is so much hope. I mean the devastating consequences of sin are seen throughout the rest of the Bible. You just take the book of Genesis. It starts out with in the beginning God, and He created life in verse one. And by the time you get to chapter 50 in the book of Genesis, last verse, the verse literally ends with a coffin and death in Egypt and that's what sin brings into our world. Life to death and chaos. But right after the fall, if you'll look in chapter three once again and you find verse 15, we read of an incredible event that took place. Because God in the midst of this, it just blows me away. He loved them so much and He loves us so much, in talking to the serpent with the curse, He says, "I will put enmity between you and the woman "and between your offspring and her offspring, "he shall bruise," He's talking about a person, "he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel." The bruising of the heel by satan to us, the idea there is that he's gonna make life really, really hard and difficult in this sinful world right now. But the key phrase I want you to see is he, a descendant of Eve. He's taking about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ shall bruise your head. He will give a deathblow to sin and satan and this is the beginning of God reveling this magnificent plan of His redemption. This is why I brought this diagram up over the past several weeks because for me, the cross is at the center of it all. This is it. The cross brings all of it together. Because of this sin, there's no hope. Your nature, your actions, everything. No hope. You separated yourself. Dead, deserving of eternal separation from God. That's the wages you deserved. But it was the grace, and the wonder, and the love of God the Father who would send His Son and go to a cross and with His life, pay the price for your sin and my sin so that a loving God would ask me to live in dependence upon Him again so that I can begin to love Him, experience His love, taste His love, and offer that to one another. The relationship is reconciled and it all goes back to the cross. You see, in and of myself, I can't love you. In and of yourself, you cannot love me. Not according to God's goodness. I mean, I just said this to a bunch of couples on Friday night. I said, I don't think there's anything in my life I've ever done without an ulterior motive. Even when you act in kindness, there's this sense of what am I gonna get out of it? Just be honest with yourself. It's always there. But when I taste intimacy, and acceptance, and love from a Holy, Righteous God, who has every reason to just wipe me out, and yet, He gave His Son to do what I could never do and give His life because that is the consequence of sin to take my sin and your sin and die so that I could taste His love and goodness and then offer that to other people. That's why Romans 5:8 says but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And in Romans 3:23, we looked at it earlier, but I wanna add the next verse. It's 24. For all have sinned and fall short of and keep sinning and falling short God's glory and are, here it is, justified or made right before God by His grace as a gift. Not my good deeds 'cause I'm dead. If I'm dead, I can't do any good deeds to get me out of a dead state. I'm justified, I'm made right with God. That's what the word means. By His grace as a gift through the redemption. This is the cross that is in Christ Jesus. It's the cross that's at the center of everything. This is the cross that allows me to be delivered from the penalty of sin and the power of sin so that I can start living out this new life so that I can start depending on Him and trusting in Him and once again, experiencing the goodness of God and all that He wants to provide for me. And that's why in Romans six, Paul eventually comes along and he says, there is this power of sin that controls your life, but now let me help you understand the power of the gospel, and the grace, and the cross of Christ. Jesus paid the price for your sin, He now takes you and puts you over here so that by relying upon Him, you can live a victorious life again. So when I start to doubt, I can go back to His goodness. So when I wonder if I can ever forgive someone, I can by His power and strength, but not without it. As we turn to communion, I wanted to go back to this idea that we find in chapter 3:15 of Genesis. Because it's right there that we have the beginning of God revealing to us that a Savior would come. That Jesus would go, and He would live a perfect life, and He would go to the cross, and He would pay the price, and He would do what we could never do. And it is communion, this time when we hold the bread and the cup that we remember the plan of redemption. We remember the cross. We remember what Jesus did for us. We remember the fact the we didn't deserve any of this. And He's saying would you come? Would you depend on Me? Would you stop living your life your way and start living it My way? And let me give you all of what I originally planned to give you. Independence upon Me. And by the time you get to the end of chapter three, He does kick them out of the garden, but He does it as an act of grace. He doesn't want them to eat of the tree of life and forever be in a state of separation from Him. And so He keeps them from taking that fruit so that they will die, but they will do so with this plan of redemption. Because He looks at them and says the leaves are not doing it, folks. We gotta give you something else to wear. And what does He do? He kills an animal. They had never seen death before. They'd never understood what it was. And as the blood was shed, He took the skin and He put it on them and He said that will serve as a covering and it's a reminder that a sacrifice needs to come so that we, by the perfect sacrifice of another, could find forgiveness and atonement. In the next few moments, we're gonna pass both the bread and a cup. If you have come to that point in your life where you have acknowledged that you are a sinner. You've acknowledged that yeah, I do things wrong. Today maybe is the first time you've seen, wow I was a really bad dude by nature too. There's just nothing I could do to get out of that. Well you'll be more grateful today. But you all have to come to that point. It's not about going to church. It's not about being baptized. It's not about all these works. It's about accepting who you really are. Before you've made this decision, trust in Christ. And in accepting that, its truth and repenting, and turning to Jesus Christ and trusting Him as a person. That He died for you. He paid the price for you. And He rose from the grave. And by trusting in that sacrifice and that He is the only one who can take you to heaven, you can begin to depend upon Him not just for your salvation, but your very life. You are welcome if you've made that choice to take communion with us. I will come back up in a few moments. I'll lead us as we take it together. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the gift. And now as we reflect upon what this means, I pray that you would move it beyond just symbols so that with our heart, we would begin to grasp the wonder, the beauty, the joy, of this gift that was given to us. And that Jesus, you paid this price because I couldn't do it. And now my total life as I wait for You, my total forgiveness is upon You, Lord Jesus. And what You've done. It's in Christ name we pray, Amen.