Greg Ford - Living in God's Redemptive Plan
We’re in a series right now that we’re calling «Cover to Cover.» It’s a 15-week series we started at the beginning of the year, two weeks ago, and it’s going to be heavy on the teaching. So if you’re not into that, you’re probably not going to like it. I really want to do the best job I can possibly do to set you up for success in feeding yourself and getting into the Word on your own and interpreting it for yourself, you know, between you and God, and not just to give you something necessarily on a Sunday but to provide you something that will last beyond Sunday. Throughout the series, I’m really trying to help not only teach something specific out of the Bible but to show the big picture of the Bible. I’ve been sharing resources with you along the way, and I’m going to keep doing that.
One of the things I’ve been showing you is the study Bible; it’s the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible. I’ve had many study Bibles, and it’s the best one I’ve ever had. What it does is it does a phenomenal job of helping you close historical distance. By that I mean, you know, Genesis, where we’re going to look today, was written about 3,500 years ago, give or take. But, you know, we’re talking a long time ago, so there’s a huge historical distance. Often, we can superimpose our cultural assumptions on the Bible, which can lead to misinterpretation. This really is going to just inform you of things that you would have no way of knowing unless you’ve done the study, so this puts it right in front of you.
Another book I recommended last week, and I want to show you again, is called «How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth,» written by one of the guys that translated the NIV Bible. This is excellent! It will help you really understand what you’re reading and how to approach the Bible. He wrote a follow-up book that’s supposed to be read after this one titled «How to Read the Bible Book by Book,» by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, and it’s just excellent. If you open up Colossians and you start reading it, you could read and reference this book to help you do that. But again, it’s designed to be read after this one, so I just want to put those in front of you. In a few minutes, I’m going to share a free resource with you; those you’ll have to purchase.
Okay, we’re going to jump into today. I want to talk about and answer the question: What is the meta-narrative of the Bible? What is the meta-narrative? Like, what’s meta-narrative? Well, meta-narrative is basically the overarching story of the Bible, right? The word «meta» means «beyond.» So if you hear «metaphysical,» it refers to something beyond the physical, right? So the meta-narrative is that we have these 66 books of the Bible, and there are a whole bunch of narratives, right? There are many narratives, but those many narratives fit into a meta-narrative.
Think about it like a human being. When somebody dies, they write an obituary, and in that obituary, you have a paragraph that tells the overarching story of that person’s life: here’s who they were, this is when they were born, where they were born, a little bit about their family, maybe a little bit about the things they loved, their education, maybe their contributions to society or the world around them. This is a summary of some of the high points of their life, their interests, hobbies, and passions. It’s a one-paragraph snapshot of a person’s life. There’s no way that coverage will cover everything, but it’s just giving you kind of the big picture.
In the same way, the Bible has many narratives. Just like in a human life, some of those narratives are extensive. For instance, in the Old Testament, Joseph in the Book of Genesis has about 13 chapters dedicated to his story. But it’s even more than that; we know who his great-grandfather was, we know who his grandfather was, we know who his parents were, we know the names of his stepmother, and we know the names of his stepbrothers. We know the details of the highs and lows of his life. Just like in your life, there are certain stories or moments or seasons that you know a ton about, but there are others that are very brief. For example, we looked at Acts chapter 8 a few weeks ago about the Ethiopian eunuch. We don’t even know the guy’s name; we just know he was from modern-day Sudan. We know a little about his career and some of his responsibilities, and then we know about a significant moment in time where his life intersected with a guy named Philip in a notable way. But that’s about all we have.
There’s another story in Luke 5 about a guy literally called the paralytic man. We don’t know his name; we don’t know where he’s from. We just know him based on the fact that he was paralyzed and was on a mat. His friends lower him through the roof of a house to see Jesus, and you know what his friends' names were? I don’t either. In Luke 5, it literally refers to them as «some men.» So, we have a paralytic man and some men that lowered him in front of Jesus. Jesus saw them and said, «Seeing their faith, he forgave the man’s sins.» What sins? We don’t know; we don’t have the details. It doesn’t say what his sins were, and we don’t really know much about what happened after he left.
So, the same goes for you and me in our lives. We have some people who come in and out quickly; we have things that are just a blip on the radar, things that are quick, and then we have things that shape us that are huge. And then we have things that never resolve. If you read the Book of Judges, it doesn’t really resolve. It’s a series of stories that go from bad to worse, and it gets to the end, and the last story in Judges is like, «Should this even be in the Bible?» It’s probably like the worst story in the whole Bible, and then it just sort of falls off a cliff; it doesn’t resolve.
There are stories in your life that don’t make sense, that don’t feel like they belong, and that don’t resolve. I have issues in my life; I have realities in my life that aren’t going- they don’t resolve; they never will. And so, welcome to the human experience. That’s what we have in the Bible. We’re not sugarcoating it; we’re looking at it the best we can to get the truth we can get, and ultimately, that revelation of who God is impacts who we are and how we relate, and it changes our lives. So, this is how we’re approaching the Bible. What is the meta-narrative? What is the big story of the Bible? That’s what I want to talk about today.
Okay, here’s a great quote from a guy named NT Wright: «The Bible is the story of a good Creator longing to put the world back into the good order for which it was designed.» I love that. I’m going to say it again: «The Bible is the story of a good Creator longing to put the world back into the good order for which it was designed.» I think that’s a good sentence to describe the Bible in a nutshell. I want to give you kind of this meta-narrative, and then we’ll talk through each of the elements and unpack them a little more. But I want to show you from the beginning of the Bible that in order for you to understand the meta- narrative, you really have to grasp the first three chapters of the Bible. So we’re going to go to Genesis 1 to 3, and here’s the meta-narrative: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration. We’re going to dig into each one of these.
Let’s start with creation, the way God intended it: new life. Alright, on the center screen, we’re going to populate some ideas that go with this. In creation, we have first that God creates people in His image. He creates a man and a woman. It says in Genesis 1:27, «God created human beings in His own image. In the image of God, He created them: male and female, He created them.» We have in Genesis 1:31 what we call divine affirmation. After God had created everything, He said it was good. He created the Earth, and it was good. He created the sky and the animals; it was good. The trees; it was good. The ecosystem; it was good. And then He creates man and woman in His image. It says in verse 27. In verse 31, it says He saw all that He had made, and it was very good. So even from Adam and Eve’s perspective, they have divine affirmation from God. They’re not wondering what He thinks about them; they know who they are. They’re made in His image, and they know how He feels about them. They are very good.
Next, they have healthy relationships. In Genesis 2:18, the Lord God said, «It is not good for man to be alone.» Loneliness is not a good thing. «I’ll make a helper who is just right, who is suitable for him.» Then in Genesis 2:23 and 24, Adam catches the spirit of the song: «At last, my love has come along.» It wasn’t that good. «You ain’t got to be nice. My lone.» Okay, Adam meets Eve and says, «This is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called’woman, ' for she was taken from man.» This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife. Look at this; this is significant: «The two are united as one.»
So look at Eden, in the Garden of Eden starting to shape out. Made in the image of God, I know who I am; divine affirmation; I know how God feels about me; healthy relationships; they’re united as one. And then next is meaningful work. In Genesis 2:19, it says, «Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky, and He brought them to the man.» Look at this! He brought them to the man to see what he would name them. Think about this. We talked about this last week in the Egyptian mind. Again, context: this is being written to the children of Israel at Mount Sinai, just a few months out of Egypt, so they have absolutely been impacted by Egyptian philosophy, cosmology, and theology. Ultimately, one of the ways that they think about existence isn’t just that things have physical properties like atoms or things having just experiential realities like love. They thought of existence as something having a function or role. We talked about this last week when God separated the light from the darkness. He named it «day»; He named it «night» to give it a function or purpose. That was part of the existence-not only giving it physical properties but giving it purpose. In giving it purpose, He’s bringing it, in a sense, into existence.
So look what He’s doing here. He’s giving meaningful work. He brings the things He brought into existence and gave them physical properties, and He gives man the power to name them-to speak about their function and their role. I mean, that’s pretty cool! It says, «Whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.» If you grew up okay in the image of your parent, if you had a good relationship with your parent, you had probably some kind of version where you’re like, «Hey, I kind of look like this person.» You’re in their image, and then you start working together, and they teach you a trade or a skill, or they teach you how to do something. At some point, you watch them or help them, and then eventually, they’re like, «Hey, what do you want to do? Go ahead; it’s your turn.» They gave you some power; they let you make some decisions. This is Adam and Eve working with God, and He’s giving them the ability to declare the function of the things He created. It’s just awesome!
Next is appropriate pleasure. In Genesis 2:9, it says, «The Lord God made all kinds of trees to grow out of the ground.» Look at this! «Trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.» Again, what’s He doing? He’s creating beauty-a beautiful world. These trees are nice to look at; they hit our taste buds a certain kind of way, and we experience beauty. Think about just the amazing experience of looking at beauty. If you’ve ever been to a place where you’re looking at a landscape, a sunset, a mountain range, or trees in bloom, you’re so moved that you want to capture it. You take out your phone and take a picture because you want to capture it; you want to show other people, and you want to be able to remember it later. You take a picture, and when you look at it on your phone, you’re like, «Oh, this doesn’t do it justice.» So what do you do? You take another picture! «Surely, if I change the angle… okay, I gotta change this to 0.5, that might do it for me.» What do you do? But that’s a longing to experience-you' re compelled by taking in beauty with your eyes and experiencing that it’s right.
So, in an appropriate way, He says these trees were pleasing to the eye and tasted good; they were good for food. Yes, we’ve been given appetites by God, we’ve been given senses by God, and so there’s an appropriate way to experience that pleasure. The next thing is self-confidence. In Genesis 2:25, it says that Adam and Eve were both naked, and they felt no shame. I think this is about more than just nudity; this is really about the vulnerability element of it. They were completely exposed-completely exposed. There was nothing hidden, and yet they were comfortable in their own skin. They weren’t worried about being criticized; they weren’t worried about being exploited; they weren’t worried about being taken advantage of. They felt good about who they were, to the point that their self-confidence led to the fact that they weren’t self-conscious. They didn’t even have to think about it, and so they felt no shame.
So if you think about narratives, think about the aspect of conflict, right? Consider the three kinds of conflict in narratives: man vs. nature, man vs. man, and man vs. self. In Genesis 1 and 2, we see that man is at peace with all three: at peace with nature, at peace with the world around him, at peace with God, at peace with himself, and at peace with Eve in their relationship. This is what we would call a state of-a word that’s used 250 times in the Hebrew Bible — the word «Shalom.» It shows up in the Book of Genesis chapter 15 for the first time, but it’s used 250 times. Shalom has a range of meaning. Peace, prosperity, completeness, fulfillment, safety, satisfaction, and contentment.
So look at this: Look at this life! «I’m made in the image of God. I know who I am. I have divine affirmation. I’m not wondering what God thinks about me. I’m in a healthy relationship with other people. I’m doing work that makes a difference. I’m appropriately empowered in my work, and I see how it matters. I’m experiencing appropriate pleasure. I' m tasting what I’m supposed to taste and seeing what I’m supposed to see. I’m self-confident. I’m comfortable in my own skin.» So it’s in this state of Shalom and peace that is what NT Wright talks about as the good order for which it was designed.
Of course, we have the next thing, which is the Fall. At some point, the free will of human beings made it so that even though they were in a state of Shalom, they wanted more. «It’s not enough. I need more.» In the creation narrative, God sets up the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He says, «You can eat of every single tree, everything you see, except this one. Don’t eat of this one. If you do this, you will surely die.» In Genesis 3:1 -10, we have the Fall. The serpent, the adversary, comes and begins to poison Eve’s mind. He comes to Eve and says, «What’s up with God? Did God really say…» In verse 1, «Did God really say you must not eat of any tree in the garden?» She’s like, «No, but what does He do? He gets it on the record.» He starts to put something in her mind. He starts to make her question God. It starts with an attempt at deception: «Did God really say this?» She’s like, «Well, no, He didn’t say we couldn’t eat from any tree, but there is this one tree we’re not supposed to eat from, and if we do, we surely die.»
It says in verse 4, «You will not certainly die,» the serpent says to the woman, «for God knows when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you’ll be like God, knowing good and evil.» In verse 6, when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye… hmm, interesting, interesting. In verse 6, «good for food and pleasing to the eye.» Does that ring a bell? Remember that! It said in Genesis 2:9 that God had already done that. God had given them all these trees that were pleasing to the eye; there was no deficit! They weren’t lacking, but there’s something about human flesh and free will that even though I have trees that are pleasing to the eye and I’ve got good things on my taste buds, I just want more, and I want different, and I want that one.
God had already given them what they needed, and then it says, «And also desirable for gaining wisdom.» This now clearly gives us a picture of the temptation that comes to our flesh. With our flesh, go ahead and consider this: with free will, we have flesh, appetites, and cravings. My flesh, my humanity, is prone to being deceived and confused. There are sometimes I do things I knew were wrong, but I did anyway, and there are times that I’m weak in my flesh. You’re shortsighted and make impulsive decisions. But sometimes you think you’re gaining something! You think it’s not a bad desire to want to gain wisdom. She thought she was going to gain wisdom, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil-He said, «Don’t take of this fruit.» Instead of having the Shalom God offered her, she decides, «I’m going to take wisdom my way» instead of trusting God and walking in obedience. Something catches her eye, and now even a good desire like wisdom, you go about it the wrong way.
Alright, and you end up walking in disobedience; you end up complicating your life. She desired wisdom, took and ate, and also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then their eyes were opened; both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked. Now, all of a sudden, I am aware of my vulnerability; I am aware of my exposure, and now I become self-conscious. So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Alright, why did these guys fall? Why did they sin? Why do humans sin? Is it because we’re just rotten? Is it because we’re bad? No, Genesis 1 says we’re made in the image of God. Is it because we’re just terrible people? No! We’re declared good. Why do we sin? We sin because we have flesh and free will. Sometimes we’re shortsighted; sometimes we’re impulsive; sometimes we do things that are selfish to satisfy ourselves. And often, we’ve all lived this -"All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.» Every one of us did something we knew was wrong, but we had no idea what it would cost us. You thought you were going to get away with it; you thought you could sweep it under the rug; you thought it would be your little secret; you thought nobody would be hurt by it. And yet, you found out it took you further than you wanted to go; it kept you longer than you wanted to be there; it was not worth the price you had to pay.
Throughout life, we do this, and we find ourselves now caught up in guilt, caught up in shame. We’ve caused pain to ourselves; we’ve caused pain to other people. Now Adam and Eve are throwing one another under the bus: «I don’t think I can trust him! I don’t think I can trust her!» They start to try to cover themselves up, and now this Shalom that is the way God intended it in our relationship with Him, each other, and the world around us has been disrupted. Now it’s every man and woman for themselves. Now we’re in combat; now we’re in conflict. And again, now we have suffering and pain, right? Sin enters the world; it’s a chain reaction. You hurt me; I hurt you. You lie to me; I lie to you. You break my trust; why would I want to keep your trust? «You did it first.»
The Fall creates this chain reaction of sin in the world. So we have creation, we have the fall, and with all of this, then we have redemption. Let’s go to redemption-grace, forgiveness, and patience. Think about this. Now, God said if you eat of this tree-if you think you know better than God, you will be like Him, and take it for yourself. Instead of living the way He intended, you’re going to do it your way. He says, «You’ll surely die.» So they eat the fruit, and then they just drop dead. No! They eat the fruit, and there were some things that died-their innocence died, their security died, their opportunity in the garden died. Because when you sin, sometimes you lose relationships, and when you sin, sometimes you lose opportunities. There were some things that died, but did God kill them? No! In fact, it says in Genesis 3:21 that the Lord made garments of skin for them. In other words, He killed an animal on their behalf. He didn’t kill them; He killed for them. Ultimately, He covered their shame and made garments for them, and clothed them.
When people think of grace, most think of the cross, but grace didn’t start on the cross; grace started in the garden. It started all the way back in Genesis 3 when they sinned. The wages of sin is that they should have died right there, but He said, «You know what? I’m going to spare you. You’re going to lose this opportunity, but I’m going to open up new life and a new door.» In fact, if you go to Genesis 4, they start having a family, right? They go to a new place, and something new begins; they begin having children and starting a family. So right there we see grace, we see forgiveness, and we see the amazing patience of God.
And then the last is restoration. It says in Genesis 3:23, «So God banished them from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which they had been taken.» They lost an opportunity, but you see that Adam and Eve continue to live and continue to have opportunities. When I say restoration, sometimes that can throw us off because you think of something being restored as getting it back; sometimes that’s the case. There are certain things that are resurrected, or sometimes you lost something, and through the process of repentance, forgiveness, and grace, you end up getting back what you lost. But there are times when you lose something, and you have to bury it. The fact that God will bring new life and new opportunity, you see that theme throughout the Bible.
So when I say restoration, don’t think that means I’m going to get back the garden specifically that I lost in the way that I had it; it’s going to go back to the way it used to be. Actually, what it really means is that it takes faith to walk into Genesis 4, into a new place I’ve not been, into a new opportunity. God brings new life. God brings new opportunity. We see this in the story of Job, who lost everything, and at the end, he has a new opportunity.
So what do we do throughout life? When we walk through this process of going from peace to our flesh, learning to manage our appetites and flesh, the process of repentance and redemption, grace, and forgiveness, it gets to the bottom word down there, which is ultimately wisdom. We learn how to make better decisions throughout life, and we learn to quickly run to God, not away from Him, avoiding Him, and hiding from Him. We learn that He’s faithful to forgive and that He’s full of grace.
So this whole thing starts in the garden. What you’re going to find throughout the story of the Bible is that you’re going to see this concept happen over and over again. Pretty quickly, we’re going to start next week looking from Adam to Abraham, but you’re going to see that in Genesis, you’re going to see the beginnings of a nation. It will say in Genesis that because of the chain reaction of sin, the world was so lawless and broken that it said pretty much all people did was think about sin all the time because all of these people were hurting one another and trying to get even with one another. It became a very painful place to be.
So God says, «You know what? I want to bless the world through a nation.» It’s through Abraham, and we’ll get into that more next week. The nation begins, and they have no king. It’s the period of the judges. One of the nice things about the study Bible, by the way, is that even in the front of the Bible, before you start reading in Genesis, it has some really nice Bible timelines because often you’ll hear a book of the Bible, and you’ll ask, «When was this? Where does this fit in the storyline of the Bible?» So you’ll see that there’s a period called the period of the judges. Don’t think of, you know, Judge Judy or Joe Brown or whoever; think of like a chief. Basically, it was someone God would raise up to help the nation through this process of redemption.
Now, what you’re going to see is a 450-year period where the nation goes through this cycle. You see peace; this is describing the cycle, what most people call the cycle of sin during the period of the judges. They would be in a time of peace, shalom, prosperity; things are going well. They’re at peace with other nations; they’re at peace with God. In that process, their flesh would cause them; they would be seduced or tempted by idolatry. They would turn their affections away from God; they would take the peace for granted, just like in Genesis 1, 2, and 3. They had the peace of God and the shalom for granted, so they would turn and begin to sin.
From there, they would start to suffer. Sometimes it would be a nation — the Jebusites, the Amalekites, the Midianites, the Philistines, these different groups of people that would come in and take over them. They would go through a period of suffering. Take the story of Gideon, right? Remember that story. In Gideon’s story, for seven years, they were being ruled by the Midianites. In another one of the stories, they are in captivity for 40 years. Through that period, people often don’t change, and nations don’t change until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.
You have this time where they suffer, and eventually, they come to their senses and begin to cry out to God and say, «We don’t want this anymore.» They turn their hearts back to God, often from the pain of the sin and the pain of the oppression. What’s interesting is I’ve always called this the cycle of sin, and I’ve always heard it called this, but I’m changing it today. I don’t want to call it the cycle of sin anymore. I want to call it the cycle of redemption.
This cycle, if you make it about the sin, gives us too much credit for our ability to screw things up. This is really about God’s patience! You look at why would you wait seven years to deliver them, God? Why would you wait 40 years to deliver them, God? Because some people take seven years or 40 years or something in between to come to their senses. It was actually the patience of God, the grace of God, the goodness of God that gave them time to come to their senses. When they repented and turned, then He would deliver them, and they would be back. We see this 450-year cycle. This happens over and over again.
So you get the idea. Now, hold on; leave that up there. Look at this: Do you see this meta-narrative? Can you see within this the idea of peace and shalom and good creation the way it’s intended and then the fall and sin and flesh and how that turns into redemption and then restoration? Okay, this runs all the way from the garden; it runs all the way through the period of the judges; it runs all the way through the period of the kings until you get to Jesus.
Jesus shows up in a broken world; Jesus shows up in a divided world, and Jesus shows up trying to help the world understand that He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the earth and that He has come for salvation, redemption, and restoration to a world that is broken, full of flesh, and hurting each other. It’s a dog-eat-dog world; if you attack me, I’ll attack you. He shows up in this broken world, and He tells this trilogy of parables to help us understand what to do in our fallen state.
In this trilogy of parables, He starts with a lost sheep. What is a sheep? It’s a dumb animal; it’s an ignorant animal! Sheep are not rebellious animals; they’re not trying to mess it up. They just foolishly wander off. It’s almost like back in the creation story when it’s like, «I want to be wise, but I went about it the wrong way.» The sheep wanders off, and it says when that sheep wandered off, the shepherd left the 99 to go pursue that one. It’s not the story of the lost shepherd; it’s not the story of the sheep’s ability to wiggle free and go find the shepherd. It’s the shepherd’s ability to get to that sheep at any cost.
The second kind of lostness is the lost coin. It’s one who’s been misplaced. It’s an inanimate object. It’s weird to use an inanimate object to talk about humans, but that’s what He does. He talks about some of us as being misplaced, like you didn’t get to pick whose house they dropped you off at. You didn’t get to pick who was in that basement with you that one time. You didn’t choose what happened on that date. You didn’t select which family you were born into. You didn’t get to pick whether you were born to a drug addict or a functional marriage. You didn’t get to pick getting caught in the mess of life. You were placed. You were born into it; by the time you had the tools and faculties to sort it out, much had happened already. You already had baggage; you’d been placed.
The story is of a woman; the coin isn’t just a coin; it’s like a wedding ring, and it says that it’s so valuable she wouldn’t stop until she swept the house clean to find it. She swept all night to pursue it. The last is the story of a third kind of lostness: a rebellious son. This isn’t a foolish one-off; this is a son who knew exactly what he was doing. He disrespected his father; he said, «I’m out of here,» took half of his stuff, left, and got lost. The story now is of a father who knows what that son needs, and he’s patient with his rebellious son. It’s not the story of a father who runs off the porch and bangs on every door, which is probably what I might tend to do. He didn’t go bang on every door. He didn’t go snatch this guy out; he sat on the porch and waited patiently. Incredible patience! Sometimes seven years, sometimes 40, but he sat there, and the text says that the prodigal son got so low he hit rock bottom.
It said when he hit rock bottom, he came to his senses. When he came to his senses, he had a partial revelation of his father; he said, «There’s no way my dad will let me be a son, but maybe he’ll let me be a slave.» «Even my dad’s slaves and servants get to eat better than this! I’m looking at this pig slop, and I’m about to dig in! This is how bad it’s gotten.» Some of you have been there; you’re like, «I didn’t know it could get this bad! I didn’t know it could hurt this bad! I didn’t know I could get this low!» He said in that low moment, he didn’t go back into the city; he didn’t go back into sin. He repented and went home.
When he was a long way off, the father ran to him. He got a revelation of his father, which is not just, «You can come here and be my servant and live in guilt, working it off while I feed you,» but he put a ring on his finger and a robe on his back and reinstated him as a son. He gave him grace because our father knows what to do with His fallen children. He knows which ones need Him to leave the 99 for the one; He knows which ones to sweep the house for, and He knows which ones to be patient and wait on. «I’m waiting on you. I’ll wait as long as it takes, even if it kills me-I’ll wait on you.»
So, the same narrative that runs from God killing a lamb to cover the shame in the garden goes to the lamb slain from the foundation of the earth. Little nugget for you: the conversation of Jesus on the cross with the thief. Remember this? They have a little dialogue with the thief on the cross, and the thief has a revelation of who Jesus is. Jesus says, «Today, you’ll be with Me in paradise.» It is an illusion back to Genesis 1, all the way back to Eden. So this narrative runs all the way through the story of the Bible, and it runs all the way to the story of you and the story of me.
When we look at our lives and we look at the many narratives-the stuff that doesn’t make sense, the stuff that will never resolve, the thing that was a blip on the radar, and the story that was extensive that impacted your life and shaped you-we bring that all to today. We look at it through the lens of wherever you are today, whether you’re living in peace or in a place of shame and brokenness. Today, we serve a God who, since the beginning of human history, has been redeeming and restoring. Take Him up on it.
Let’s pray. Lord, we come to You in the powerful name of Jesus. Lord, we’re about to baptize some people, and in front of us, we’re going to have a vivid picture of grace, of forgiveness, of redemption, of restoration. Lord, as our brothers and sisters go into the water, the warmth of Your grace will cover every hair on their head and every part of their skin, and those mercies are new every morning. So today, Lord, even as we’ve taken time to see this run through the whole Bible, it really impacts us where we are, where we stand right here, right now. So we take a moment to say thank You for Your grace, thank You for Your redemption, and thank You for new life. In Jesus' name, everybody said, «Amen!»