Anchored to the Word | Nehemiah 8:1-8

Transcript is automatically produced. Errors may be present.

Good morning everyone.

My name’s Jessica Rest. I’m one of the pastors of Connection and Formation here itself. And before we go too much farther, let’s pray. Father God, thank you that you desire to make yourself known and to know us. We pray that you would speak this morning through your word to each of us here, that you would prepare our hearts to receive what you have to say.

In your name we pray, amen. This summer whether or not you’ve been here for the whole series so far, or this is your first week back after some travel, we’re exploring this idea of what it means to have an anchor or anchors in a season where life feels un anchored. And for me, and probably for a lot of us here, summer is one of those ached season.

We have vacations, we have a lot more on the calendar. My daughter’s outta school while my husband and I are working, and there’s very little of a regular life rhythm that we actually have to hold onto. I actually feel like I’m trying to create a new life weekend, every single, a new life rhythm, every single weekend from scratch, and that doesn’t work very well.

I feel like right now my planner is my anchor and it’s not so much an anchor as a. Little floaty that I’m holding on for dear life and hopefully this is on. There we go. There’s the floaty. There’s not a whole lot of stability to it, and that’s part of why we’re talking about this series is because that’s how so many of us go through life on a regular basis, just grabbing onto one thing after another, holding on desperately and hoping that something will hold us fast.

So we live in a culture in a country where we have so many opportunities, so many choices, so many competing priorities and things that could be anchors for us, that more often than not, we end up living untethered lives. We live in a country where freedom and choice, our core values. We just got to celebrate that on Friday, but what we’re exploring today as a community and throughout this series as a community is this idea of unbound freedom. The idea that each of us gets to blaze our own trail, make our own path. No one should be able to impose limits upon us or have a say. It’s all up to us. Is this idea of unbound freedom actually something that is limiting in and of itself?

Is it actually good for our soul? Are there things that maybe we do need to say yes or no to in order to really thrive as human beings? And the argument that we’re making is, yeah, actually unbound freedom is in and of itself a different kind of bondage. That there are things that we are wired as humans to need.

Roots and to need to clinging to. And today we’re exploring one of those things that’s been an ongoing anchor for followers of Jesus throughout the century. The word of God. So what is the word of God? My guess is that once I mentioned that’s what we’re talking about, at least a good portion of you jump to, oh, she’s gonna tell us.

We just need to read our Bibles more. And you’re not like totally wrong actually. And even though there’s more to this idea of the word of God as a theological concept, than solely reading your Bible, that’s a really important piece of it. But the thing is, I don’t think I actually need to spend a whole sermon just telling you that you should read your Bible, and here’s why.

I think if you’re even moderately interested in following Jesus and his way in his heart. You probably already have an idea that you should read your Bible. Whether or not you do it might be a different story, right? I don’t. I don’t know, but you probably already know that you should. So we’re actually gonna spend more time today talking about why.

Why is this text something to anchor to as followers of Jesus? And we’ll get a little bit more into how as well. But if we just stop at should and never internalize the reasons why something matters, why something is worth anchoring to, that doesn’t actually motivate us. To any kind of action, right?

Should in and of itself, or maybe the guilt associated with not doing something we think we should do doesn’t really create lasting change. Exercise is the classic example of this, right? It’s the stereotypical New Year’s resolution. We could probably all affirm that, yeah, we should exercise and we could probably list like at least one reason why someone’s told us that we should exercise before.

But that doesn’t get you off the couch in and of itself. It doesn’t get me off the couch. Even knowing that I was using this as a sermon illustration this week, I didn’t exercise more in the last two weeks just because I was thinking someone might judge me for admitting I don’t move. And scripture’s in that same category as exercise for a lot of us.

Just, we know. Just because we know something should be an anchor doesn’t mean that we actually make it an anchor. At least not until we really internalize and understand the why behind it. But I do wanna acknowledge something before we get too far into the sermon. Today. God’s word as a concept, as an understanding of how he reveals himself is such an immense topic that we could spend years.

Talking about it together, and we would still be coming up with new pieces and things to com converse about with together. And I have one sermon in this series. Instead of covering everything that the books and podcasts and seminary courses cover, I can only scratch the surface today.

And there are going to be topics that you wish I touched on and hard questions that you wish I answered, and applications that you wish I made. And that’s just not possible unless we commit to staying here for a month. And I don’t think anyone’s really. On board with that right now. I don’t know if I’m on board with that.

So that’s part of the reason why we have a podcast, red Couch Theology on Thursdays. Send in your questions to red couch theology.com and in a couple days we’ll do our best to cover just a little bit more when it comes to the word of God. So what is the word of God? When it from a Christian perspective, God’s word is his revelation of himself.

Okay. In a particular time and place to a particular person or group of people. And theologically speaking, there’s two big categories. When we talk about God’s revelation, there’s general revelation and there’s special revelation. So general revelation is what’s available. God’s communication of himself that’s available to all people at all times in all places, if they look for it.

Nature is one of the biggest examples of general revelation. Psalm 19, one talks about the heavens d declaring the glory of God and the skies proclaiming the works of his hands. If you go on a hike again, if you’re someone who exercises and goes on a hike, or you go out to the ocean or look at the stars or a sunset and you get this sense of something bigger or someone bigger out there and behind everything, that’s a glimpse of general revelation.

The course of history is another example of general revelation. So natural law and shared concepts of right and wrong across cultures and centuries. But God doesn’t stop with general revelation because God is not a distant God. He’s a personal God who wants to be known and to know us. And that is where special revelation comes in.

Special revelation is those revelations of himself in particular times and ways to particular people. The difference between general recogni revelation and special revelation is like the difference between seeing someone across the room and recognizing that you’ve seen them before, and maybe being able to put a name with a face on the one hand and actually sitting down with that person and having a conversation with them and building a friendship with them.

On the other hand, general recognition is not the same thing as relationship, and if we want to know who God is and what he cares about, how else are we going to do that? Then finding it in his own revelation of himself. Things like God speaking through prophets. Jesus appearing to people in dreams.

Jesus himself is actually called the Word of God in John one. We touched about that a little bit in our advent series. He’s the ultimate revolution of who God is God in the flesh. And scripture falls under that category of special revelation. So here’s our working definition for scripture today.

Scripture is God’s revelation of himself to particular people in particular times. That has been written and recorded with the process of writing and recorded guided by the Holy Spirit. If someone says that Scripture’s inspired, that’s what they’re talking about. This process of being guided by the Holy Spirit.

It’s written for the purpose of communicating who he is, what he’s done, and what he’s doing, so that we might know him, be in relationship with him and live how he has called us to live. And that’s quite the definition, right? But the magnitude of that definition, the amenity and complexity of that definition should clue us in as to just how much is contained in this text and the magnitude of what purports to happen when we engage with God’s word on God’s terms.

In the Chronicles of Narnia, in the line, the witch and the wardrobe, particularly CS Lewis, tells the story of four children who are taken to another world when they enter a wardrobe that they thought’s, just an old wardrobe in a spare room. But instead of just a piece of furniture filled with coats, they find a place that contains multitudes with new friends to meet and battles to fight, and a world to explore.

And the thinking thing can, same thing can happen when we engage with scripture, not like a portal to another world, but we should know that what looks like just a book that we can take or leave, depending on our interest or our needs or our schedules, is so much more than a book. Scripture is where we meet with God and find out more about his character.

It also is instructive for us today. Part of what it means that scripture is the word of God, is that the Spirit is still active and still moving and working through it in our lives and the lives of our communities. Hebrews four 12 tells us that the word of God is alive and active. It’s sharper than any double-edged sword.

It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart. And two Timothy three 16 through 17 adds all scriptures. God briefed and it’s useful for teaching for rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

So scripture’s, the place that we can go to learn about God. If that’s where he tells us who he is and what he’s done and how to follow his weight and his heart, that is our first why not? Because you’re living up to someone’s expectations by reading it, not because you’re even living up to God’s expectations or because you’re looking for encouraging promises or principles, even though those are there, right?

We engage with scripture in order to engage with God himself. What are we missing? If we treat a gift as an obligation, we’re missing God’s heart. We have a God that loves us so much that he’s not content to remain distant from us and wait for us to figure out how to close that gap if we can. He’s come close to us through Jesus and through his written word in scripture.

Anchoring in God’s word isn’t just anchoring to a practice, it’s anchoring to the one behind the word. So for the purposes of the sermon, we’re gonna focus on scripture, the Bible, 66 books compiled together into one text that tells us as followers of Jesus who God is and what He’s done and what that means for our lives.

And we’re gonna zoom in today on the story of the people of God engaging with the word of God together and what it means for them and what that also means for us as we seek to anger in God’s Word. But the thing is, before we get into the book of Nehemiah, if we’re just jumping in with a couple verses and reading it cold, we’re jumping in the middle of a story.

A story that actually really matters for understanding the text and what we’re trying to engage with. See, in Genesis 12, God called Abraham and he told them that Abraham would have descendants and he would give that descendant’s land, and that more importantly, God would be the God of those descendants.

He would walk with them, he would guide them, and he would be in covenant relationship with them. And Abraham did have descendants. Those descendants had descendants, and they became known as the people of Israel. They ended up in Egypt, which eventually turned into being enslaved in Egypt. Gather, brought them out of slavery through the leadership of Moses, and he gave them instructions on what it meant to be his people and what that looked like.

Not just a list of do’s and don’ts, but a vision of what it meant to be a holy people, because he is a holy God and they are his people. He gave them a vision of what it meant to have a society focused on him. And then as an outflow of that, loving their neighbors themselves, focusing on the most vulnerable and respecting their neighbor, and eventually after some very big bumps along the way.

They agree to that wholeheartedly, and God brings them into the land that was promised to Abraham, and they established themselves as a nation in essentially a kingdom. But what they agreed to doesn’t last for very long. The law that they sign onto, they don’t follow for very long. They reject this idea of God being their king.

They demand human kings like every other nation around them. And some of these kings are good leaders. Some of them love the Lord and wanna follow him, but most of them don’t. And sooner rather than later, instead of one kingdom of Israel, they split into a northern kingdom of Israel and a southern kingdom of Judah.

And that’s two kingdoms moving farther and farther away from worshiping God alone as he called them to, and farther away from loving the vulnerable and loving their neighbor as he called them to. And he sends prophets to remind them of who he is and what they’re supposed to be doing. But they don’t really listen.

They don’t repent. They don’t change their ways. And as a result, both kingdoms are sent to exile. 7 22 Assyria takes away the northern kingdom of Israel. 135 years later, the southern kingdom of Judah follows their society’s destroyed. Jerusalem is destroyed. The temple of God is destroyed, and they’re taken away by Babylon to exile.

And that after hundreds of years of history is where we pick up on the book of Nehemiah. So why does it matter that we know any of that information? Because nothing is scripture is written in a vacuum. It’s not just a random collection of like character sketches and short stories and life advice. It’s all one larger story.

And what’s come before the book of the Nehemiah come before the book of Nehemiah in that larger story shapes what is actually written here. So when we get to Nehemiah, Nehemiah himself is living in Suse, the capital of Persia. Persia took over from the Babylon Babylonians as they fed feted out. And Nehemiah is in a really good position, even though he’s part of an exiled people.

He’s covered to the king. That’s a position of trust and influence and authority. But instead of staying in a good spot, he hears about efforts to rebuild Jerusalem, and he’s moved to ask the King, king Artis, Xerxes to let him go too. So he goes back with a number of people from exile. They join with other people who have already returned and they set to work rebuilding the city of Jerusalem.

And they’ve made really good progress by the end of chapter seven, where we’re gonna pick up today, they’ve finished the walls of Jerusalem. They at least have places to live, but instead of moving forward with their goal, instead of maintaining that momentum, they stop and they gather together. So picking up in chapter seven, verse 73, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the musicians, and the temple servants, along with certain of the people and the rest of the Israelites, settled in their own towns.

When the seventh month came and the Israelites had settled in their towns, all the people came together as one in a square before the Watergate. They told Ezra, the teacher of the law to bring the book. Of the love of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for Israel. So on the first day of the seventh month, as the priest brought the law before the assembly, which was made up of men and women and all who are able to understand, he read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he faced the square before the Watergate, and the presence of the men, women, and others who could understand, and all the people listened attentively to the book of the law.

Ezra, the teacher of the law stood on a high one platform, built for the occasion beside him. On his right stood Matt Shama Anaya, Uriah Ho Emma Asaya. And on his left were Aya Mishael, mal Hashem, hash pah, aria and Lum. Ezra opened the book. All the people could see him because he was standing above them, and as he opened it, the people all stood up.

As to praise the Lord, the great God, and all the people lifted their hands and responded, amen. Amen. Then they bowed down with their faces to the ground. The Levites Yashua, Bonnie, she Amin, aab, Shaha Ho Asiah, Kada, Azariah, Joseph Hania, and Aya instructed the people in the law while they were standing there.

They read from the book of the law of God making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read. So what does a story about other people listening to God’s word thousands of years ago mean for us as we seek to anchor in God’s word? Their need as a community to anchor together in God’s word mirrors ours.

They had a need as a community to come together and hear his word together, and that’s part of what we’re actually doing now this morning.

And even though that they’ve spent so much time rebuilding and trying to craft this wall and work together, and they’re pausing to do this together, it’s not an interruption to their narrative. Them gathering together to hear the word of the Lord is actually the center. Of the narrative, the center of the whole book of Nehemiah.

It’s not a construction project. That’s the point of the book of Nehemiah. It’s to recount the rebuilding of a people under the story of God that they were supposed to be following in the first place. It’s a people who has come back together from disaster where they lost everything that was supposed to be a marker of their identity.

Their temple was gone. Their city was gone. They had no tie to their geographical land anymore. Their leaders were taken away, and yet here they are back together again, reestablishing who they are and who they are called to be. They’re anchoring themselves in this story of where they have come from and what their future is going to look like because they’re anchoring in that story that God has for them.

Their story found in God’s word. The law at this point is the center of their identity at this point, not what they’ve accomplished as a group, not their homes, not the wall that they just made, but God first and foremost in that God given story and they know that It’s only when they understand that story, can they move forward together in a meaningful way.

And that’s counterintuitive to us as Americans and as Westerners to us, a blank slate blazing our own trail is the goal and what we expect for ourselves and our futures. Making your own way and own path and building everything yourself is the American dream, right? But this community is saying, no, we can’t thrive until we listen to who God says first.

And in the following chapters of Nehemiah, the rest of chapter eight, all the way to chapter 10, they spend more time together studying the word of God. They realize they aren’t living in line with this story, and they change and change their practices and actions to live in line with that story. And then they come together again as a community and they recount their whole history from creation all the way up to that day.

And they rededicate themselves to living in that story. They re-anchor themselves and then they move forward with rebuilding and reestablishing themselves. Stories really powerful. We all have stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, and we have stories that are surrounding culture, our American culture, western culture, our family culture.

Tell us about we are about who we are and what shapes us. And if you meet someone new and they say, oh, so tell me about yourself, you’re gonna have certain things and pieces of your story that rise to the top first, right? It might be your marital status, or whether you have kids. That’s a driving feature of your story right now.

It might be your job. That’s a driving feature of your story. If you’re a Colorado native or a Broncos fan, like maybe that’s a driving feature of your story. Political parties and sports teams and hobbies, all of those things drive how we see ourselves and how what we share with others about ourselves.

And so do traumas and so do past achievements. So do senses of lack or pain or loss. So do hopes for the future. More often than not, our stories drive. How we interact with those around us and those things that we are trying to anchor to. But what does that actually offer us? What do we do if our anchor is just ourselves?

What happens when those pieces of our story that we’ve been trying to hold onto and clinging to and make our foundation have to change or disappear? God’s story. God’s word is God’s story, and that’s so much more powerful. What he offers us is so much more powerful than just our own selves and our own sense of ourselves as an anchor.

When we read God’s story, we realize that it’s not just about instructions. It’s a whole. A whole legacy of creation, fallen redemption that we are invited to participate in. More often than not, we try to fit somewhere, God’s somewhere into our own stories where it’s convenient or it’s comfortable. Maybe sometimes we’re willing to try a new challenge or take a new step, but most of the time it’s us and then God, but we’re, what we’re being invited to when we anchor in God’s story is not to pack God into our story.

But to find shelter in his, and if we’re gonna live in his way with his heart, we need to be anchored in and consistently reminding ourselves of that story, just like the people in Nehemiah’s Day had that need to. Nt Wright says this really well. We read scripture in order to be refreshed in our memory, an understanding of the story within, we ourselves are actors to be reminded where it’s come from and where it’s going to.

And hence what our own part within it ought to be. Anchoring in God’s word isn’t just anchoring to a practice. It’s anchoring ourselves to a bigger story. There’s another aspect of this passage in Nehemiah that I do wanna highlight for us today. Being anchored in God’s word as individuals and anchored in God’s word as a community both matter.

It’s not one or the other. With some of us getting to opt towards individual study and us and Jesus and that’s all we need and some of us getting to forget the individual piece, but we show up on Sundays and we do community and we’re good. It’s both ant and we actually see this in the ways that the Israel the Levites and the leaders of the community interact with the whole people of the community of Israel.

And I know that when we get to whole long list of names in scripture and it’s in a language that we do not know, and we have no idea who these people are and why they’re there or what they might have done, it is really hard to stick with that list and engage with it. More often than not, we’re tempted to just jump forward and find the next set of instructions or the next story and pass it by.

But if someone is named in scripture, they’re actually named for a reason. They were a living, breathing person who is part of their community and Matta Oshima and Maiah. They were all important members of their believing community. They were playing a part Alex and Erin and Angela and Todd and Carrie and everyone else in South Fellowship.

Who leads or teaches in some way is to us. But it’s not enough for the people of Israel gathering together in Nehemiah chapter eight that a few people know what the word of the Lord says. It’s not enough that a couple people know that story and can share that story. It’s for the whole community to know.

Nehemiah chapter eight, one and two, all the people came together. And it’s mentioned again, the men and women and all who are able to understand where they’re in. This concept of the whole community engaging with the Lord of the Lord is repeated in seven of these eight verses over and over again.

And all who can understand isn’t just adults. That’s covered in the men and women part. All who understand actually means kids. So the whole community that’s there, regardless of age and education and gender is engaging together with scripture, and that’s what we’re called to the whole community called to engage in God’s word.

And it’s not new to this period of Israel’s history that they should all be engaging with God’s word. This is woven throughout scripture. Deuteronomy six, four through nine is one of the most beautiful expressions of this, I think, hero Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your strength.

These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts and press them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you lock one on the road, when you lie down, when you get up, tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your house and on the gates.

Know these words and commands. Teach your children. Talk about them every day, not just when you’re in the temple. Or the tabernacle Anchoring in the word is both a community practice and an individual practice, and the whole community is called to both. So if anchoring ourselves and God’s word matters, if this is how we know who God says he is, and the story that we’re part of, how do we do it well, anchoring in the words more than a practice.

It’s about connecting with the one behind the word and his story, but it does actually still require some kind of practice. And everything that I’m gonna suggest today is not like a step-by-step checklist of exactly how to do it right. It’s just suggestions of where to start or where to shift to, if that’s something that you need.

But start with prayer and start with where you are. Ask yourself when it comes to anchoring in the word of God, what am I already doing? Is this actually what I want it to be and why? And bring it to Jesus. Any kind of spiritual practice is supposed to be done in partnership with Jesus, not just on your own, checking it off the list, figuring it out, and hopefully you connected with him later.

It’s supposed to be intertwined with spending time with him with. With being with him, and that’s where prayer comes in too. They’re intertwined together, reading and engaging the word of God.

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in trying to start and find that perfect thing before we do anything that we totally derail ourselves from making any kind of project and any kind of progress. But just try something. It doesn’t matter if it’s the perfect thing. It doesn’t matter if it’s the practice that you are gonna continue forever and ever into eternity.

Amen. That might not be what you start with, and that’s okay. In his book, habits of the Household, Justin Whipmill early talks about family devotionals, reading scripture together as a family, and he says, when it comes to family spiritual formation, it’s not about perfect practice. It’s about moving from nothing to something.

And that’s true. Whether you’re thinking about this in terms of a family or in terms of just yourself. Try something and you might need to change it later. And that’s fine

and be intentional. Maybe you need to set an alarm on your phone if that’s something that you need to do right now to get more in the habit and rhythm of engaging with God’s word, engaging with scripture. I’m actually giving you permission to pull out your phone and put that in, so take advantage of that.

Maybe you need to move your Bible to a more accessible place. Small steps are what create long lasting habits and long lasting practices, but you have to be intentional with it. We don’t just magically reach this place where we’re reading our Bible every day or whatever it is that we’re trying to do without taking small steps to get us there.

Maybe you don’t know where to start. Maybe you’re starting from scratch and you have no idea what to do. Start with a gospel. One of the biographies of Jesus at the beginning of the New Testament. Mark is the shortest gospel. It also moves pretty quickly. It is a great place to start. If you wanna try the Old Testament, maybe start the Psalms or try a Bible reading plan.

There are many Bible reading plans out there that will take you through the whole Bible in a year’s time. We actually have one on our website, south fellowship.org/life that you can find. The Bible Project is a great website that has other options and has a lot of great resources for going through books of the Bible or themes of the Bible.

They have more plans but. Maybe you need to try listening to an audio version or read aloud. Maybe you’re trying to read a print version of scripture and you’re actually an audio learner and you’re not getting anything that you’re reading. Shift to an audio version. Try reading it aloud so you can actually engage what’s being said.

And if scripture’s a community practice, how do we engage with community? Bible studies are great. We’ll have some starting up in the fall. Our high schoolers actually meet. Every Sunday morning before the service to study God’s word together. But you don’t have to wait until the fall to engage with scripture in a communal way.

That’s part of what we do here together on Sunday mornings. That’s actually part of why it matters that we gather together as a church bodies to hear the word of the Lord together. We also have the daily. It’s our weekly devotional. We have a team that meets on Tuesday mornings to actually study a passage of scripture together and write devotionals off of it.

And when you read the daily, you’re engaging with the same passage of scripture as many other people in our congregation and people throughout the world all at the same time. But here’s the most basic communal thing that you can do to study the word of God. You can talk about it with someone. You can bring your questions to someone else.

You can share what you are learning and seeing in God’s word with someone else that you know and love. Talk to your spouse or your kids or grandkids, or a friend or your roommate or whoever. It is actually a really normal thing for followers of Jesus to share where we see Jesus showing up in our lives, and that includes where we see him in his word.

And it might feel awkward if that’s not a conversation that you’re used to having. If you’re not used to talking about faith in your day-to-day life with other people, and that’s okay, but you’re also never going to be comfortable having those conversations if you never practice. Having those conversations and kids or parents, we talked about this a little bit earlier, but helping our kids understand the word of God and who he is and what that means is part of our role as parents, it’s for them to understand them, to engage with as well.

And that’s part of what we’ve been called to by nature of our role and responsibility. And we can and should partner with other people, right? We have amazing volunteers and self students and self kids who want to partner with you and helping our kids know and grow. And I don’t want you to walk away with this sense that if you didn’t have your kid memorize the whole Bible, by the time they graduate from high school, you just fail this.

A parent that’s not what we’re going for. But if God’s word. It’s where we learn about who he is and what he’s done and the story that we each get to engage with. Isn’t that something that we want for our kids to know, not just in their heads, not just being able to recount a couple stories or name some facts or some verses, but to know it deep in their heart that they are beloved by our God.

That they have an opportunity to know more about him and more about that story that they are invited to and get to participate in, if that’s what we want for our kids, and that’s what we want for ourselves. Even if it’s intimidating. And it is intimidating to think about how on earth do I help my daughter understand this thing that she’s invited to and this big picture of God’s story.

But let’s go back to one of our previous encouragement and just try something, start small. We love the Jesus Storybook Bible at our house. That’s one story a day with a great weaving through of the whole story of God into every single story that it mentions. And I know that Kathy, our director of kids, would love to have a conversation with you about.

How to teach your kids about God’s word and what that looks like for you guys individually. We all need anchors, whether they’re big or little God’s word as we’re talking about it. Today’s scripture is one of those anchors, not because someone you told you that it should be not because I preached on it today, not because it’s an enhancement to your life, but because through God’s word we come to know who he is, what he’s doing.

And what that means for each of us to be within his story. And if we desire to follow him and to know him, the best way to start is by learning about what he says he is. If we wanna be a church where we encounter Jesus and keep taking next steps, scripture is a wide open invitation to encounter him.

Anchoring in God’s word isn’t just anchoring to a practice. Is anchoring to the one behind the word into his story. We’re gonna move to a time of communion in just a few minutes. It’s a practice actually instituted in scripture. Come up and take the bread in the cup when you’re ready. We have tables up here and tables in the back, but as you take communion, pause and reflect on what is this story that you’re being invited to.

Who is this God who has come close to us and wants to be known and to know you? If you wanna pray with someone, we have people in the back and at the front. Take the cup when you’re ready or take the bread when you’re ready. We’ll all take the cup together at the end.