The Prisoner in Command | John 18:1-40

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Good morning, south Fellowship Church. It’s good to see you all this morning. If you’re tuning in online. Then we’re glad you joined us as well. I said that to last service and there wasn’t anyone tuning in online. ’cause we don’t stream first service. But this is what happens when you rehearse and things just happen.

Yeah, if you’re new or new-ish, my name’s Aaron Borland. I’m one of the pastors here. And if that is you we have a place in the lobby just for you. It looks a little bit like this. It says New to South and welcome. And that’s a place I would encourage you to drop by and just see if this is a community where you can find some deep relationships.

Because if all you ever experience of this community is what we do here on a Sunday morning, then you’re missing out on what God had in mind for the church. And so just find out what’s going on there. And in midweek and where you can be known and valued and loved and really plug in to what God had in mind of about being in part of the church.

Before we dive in I just wanna point out if I were to touch on every verse for less than one minute then I would go over or like over 40 minutes or like right around 40 minutes. So we don’t have time for that. So that’s why we have a midweek podcast called The Red Couch Theology Podcast.

And I am going to be putting massive amounts of insight and intricacies that John weaves into this passage into the podcast. That way I can now get you out of here before next Sunday. Before we dive in, let’s just pray. Maybe just take a moment and I’d encourage you to take a deep breath in.

Slowly hold it for four seconds. One, two. Three, four, and then breathe out for four seconds.

Holy Spirit, we gather in this place with the intention to hear from you, to hear from you as you testify to the wisdom of Jesus in this passage.

That we gather in this place, longing to be a people that behave like you, Jesus, that bring your goodness into this world.

Longing to encounter your goodness, to see restoration in this world and to all of this end, Lord, we ask that you would give us ears to hear, eyes to see your truth, we pray. In your beautiful name. Amen. Amen. A number of years ago, if you were to ask me if I was a control freak, I would’ve probably said, no.

Not at all. I’m not really a control freak. See, I’ve been pretty laid back most of my life. Especially growing up in my younger years, I was the most like, chill member of the family. I go with Flo. I don’t care where we go to eat. I just encounter stressful situations. I seemed unfazed by them.

So much so that my mom gave me the nickname. The family duck because stuff would just roll off my back. I would just, things would happen. I, I lived through a genocide and I just seemed fine. And so I would’ve thought of myself as pretty laid back and not very much of a control freak.

Unfortunately, for me over the last several years, I’ve become self. And I’ve learned that I’m not as relaxed as I thought I was. And I don’t know if that’s just something that comes with age or I’m just becoming aware of some of the little pockets of control that I long for in my life as I was as I was meditating on this idea of control.

This week I was just paying a little extra attention to it this week. And, it popped up everywhere, and maybe I am clinically diagnosed as a control freak now after paying attention just for one week. One example is we have this little Australian Shepherd and he is highly anxious if shepherds, they need.

Lots of things to do to keep them occupied and they need to get all their energy out and they have infinite amounts of energy. And if they don’t, they are the worst. And so normally at nighttime, we put him in the downstairs bathroom with his little bed because he’s like also highly anxious, and so it makes him feel safe and he just calms down and he actually goes to sleep If I forget.

Like Thursday night, one of his favorite things to do to occupy his little mind, and I don’t know, maybe calm himself down, is he likes to go into all of our bathrooms and get all of the tissue paper or like tissues and kleenex out of the trash cans, and then not eat them, but to shred them into tiny shards of toilet paper and then not just in the bathroom.

But to deposit them equally spread across the whole entire house. So I woke up Friday morning and I walked out the door and in four seconds I am just like livid. And I’m just running around the house and just picking up all this little tiny shards of toilet paper. And if you have a bunch of people in your house with colds like we did over the last couple weeks you want to isolate the germs into one space?

No. This dog would like to deposit all of these germs, every square inch of the house. And I wanted to control him, if but the problem for me is he’s also so highly anxious and so nervous. I can’t even scold him. If I look sideways at him, he won’t come in from the outside when we let him out to go to the bathroom.

’cause he’s you don’t like me. I live out here now. And so if I scold him, I will never get him inside again ’cause he’s too quick and so forth. Yet another example this is dog hair on the rug in our kitchen. A piece, helpful piece of information for you to understand. My angst is I vacuumed this rug four hours before this photograph was taken.

It’s. Covered in dog hair. We have two dogs, two black dogs. And if you’re looking for a family pet, see me after the service ’cause I would like to control them outta my house away. Alright but if you’re about to judge me, like I think we all have some of these kinds of things, don’t we? How many of you are of the opinion that there is a correct way and an incorrect way to load the dishwasher?

Yeah. Any takers out there like some of us? Some of us are of the persuasion that I paid good money for this dishwasher and I don’t, I didn’t buy a dishwasher so that I could wash the dishes multiple times. So I should be able to just throw everything in, anything in there, any which way, and it should come out clean.

And if it doesn’t, it’s the dishwasher’s. And then there are some others of us who think that when you Lord the dishwasher, it should be an expression of worship to the glory of the God, of order and structure. Oh, I feel so good. Let’s be honest. Who has dishes that are that uniform really seriously?

Or how about this one? Any opinions here? Is there a correct way? If I wanted to break up some marriages, we could just start taking votes right now. You come to church and you’re like, I come to be replenished and rejuvenated and given hope, and you leave just fighting in the car about the dishwasher and about toothpaste.

I’ve got a hot take that’s very personal to me and I’m probably in the minority. I’m aware, but let me just point to that some of you I’ve figured out are control freaks when it comes to spelling and grammar because I am not very good at that, and I hear from you. True story. This happened.

There was a time when I spelled the word intelligence wrong in one of my slides on a Sunday morning. Which is a really unfortunate spelling error if you want to be taken seriously while on a platform. But I heard from some of you control freaks out there that spelling and grammar is important and there’s a right way and a wrong way.

Now these are some funny stories, right? But they can get a little bit more serious too. This last week I thought, I was trying to think of some ideas of funny ways that I am act like a control freak. So I asked my wife. For some stories like, how do I act like a control freak? And I didn’t tell, have a chance to tell her.

I was hoping for funny stories and without me even finishing the sentence, she said, Hey, I think sometimes you try to control my emotions. Like when I’m sad, you try and spin things and manipulate the realities so that I feel better about those things. Or you try, like when there’s a bad situation, you always try and make it sound less bad than it actually is.

Or when there’s a dangerous situation, you always try to slough it off. It’s not like you’re manipulating people’s emotions. And this is something I do, I try to manage people’s emotions, especially when they involve me. See, I wanna lower the bar so that I can get over the bar, right? If I can make people feel okay, and that’s what I need to be, okay.

Then maybe just, maybe my world’s gonna be better, but in order for my world to be better, I gotta manipulate how you feel about the world. So some of these things get really difficult for us. Did you know uncertainty is processed by the brain as a physical threat, and the desire to control is a desire to eliminate.

Uncertainty. This is so true. Your brain actually processes uncertainty as like a dangerous situation. It’s so true that your brain actually would prefer knowing something, bad’s going to happen than being uncertain whether something bad is gonna happen. You’re actually, your physiology will go into fight or flight faster and more aggressively if there something might happen or might not.

Then if it’s not gonna be bad. Isn’t that crazy? American author, he’s a horror author HP Lovecraft said this, and I think it, it’s so true. The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. And he manipulated fear all the time in his novels. And the oldest and strongest kind of fear is the fear of the unknown.

And so here’s what’s going on in your body and in your brain. And one of the reasons why we have a mental health crisis in our world today is because there’s so much uncertainty in our world is they’re not, we’re at war and news channels are throwing out terms like world war and stuff. Not the most comforting language to hear.

There’s uncertainty, the gas prices, the whatever it may be, fill in the blank where your physiology just starts to react. And yes, you may be able to put it on the back burner, but your body keeps the score and your body feels those things. And there’s like this low grade fever across our entire society where anxiety is on the rise and it’s no wonder.

We have a mental health crisis because our bodies cannot handle this kind of thing. So here’s what’s going on in our minds and in our bodies, when we counter the unknown, fear of the unknown leads to a desire for control. So this is where that desire wells up in us, right? Desire for control leads to a hunger for power.

So when someone when any one of us wants to exert control. Powerfully with our words or with our language or with our bodies. The reason political powers or individuals try and rise to high positions of power, it’s because they have a fear of the unknown and they want to control something. They feel like if I’ve got more access to the strings than maybe I can get what I want done in the world.

Done. And so the question we have for our passage today is, where does true power reside when life appears to be out of control? And sometimes I feel that way, and my guess is that sometimes you feel that way too. We’re gonna dive in into verse two. What we see is Jesus pivots out of last week’s passage from that Alex preached where they’re in the upper room and he’s talking and he’s teaching, he’s in expressing love.

And then in, in the text here in chapter 18, he pivots and starts marching towards the cross. And Alex will be sharing out of chapter 19 next week. And then we’re gonna spend time on resurrection Sunday in 20. And, th They leave this upper room and they go to this garden. In verse two, we read this.

Now, Judas, who was be, who betrayed him, knew the place because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. So Judas came to the garden guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and the Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns, and weapons. In order for you to feel this, I want you to picture that that anxiety inducing moment, right? This, it’s dark. And then there’s this detachment of soldiers that show up in this garden, and they’ve got weapons and torches and lanterns and this term detachment of soldiers is really interesting. And I think John selects this word strategically. It’s the Greek word.

Spion and it’s the 10th part of Allegion, normally 600 soldiers. And even if you try and say, ah, it’s probably a subset of that. And the point John is trying to make is this is an outlandishly large number of soldiers. These are the elite of the elite. This is the most powerful military force in the first century world and 600 shoulders, soldiers show up to arrest.

One guy this is what I would call sh a shock and awe technique. If you’ve heard that term, I heard it a bunch in the, when the Iraq war was taking place in 2003 ish. This is a textbook taught to the US military around that timeframe, and it actually draws from techniques from Ancient Rome Act, believe it or not, it’s called shock and Awe achieving rapid Dominance.

And it’s a technique designed to shock everyone so much with how much force is shown so that the enemy just caves and surrenders quickly, hopefully to prevent additional warfare. And this is exactly what we have in this text. They show up with a massive show of force, 600 armed military forces.

It’s they come on strong. And then this happens. Jesus knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, who is it that you want? Jesus of Nazareth. They replied, I am He. Jesus said, and Judas, that traitor was standing there with them. When Jesus said, I am He. They drew back and fell to the ground.

Interestingly enough. The word he is not in those two little phrases, it actually says I am,

and it’s this little Greek construction which calls back to an Old Testament passage. Eggo me is I am. And it’s the Greek translation of an Old Testament text where God, where Moses asks God, what is your name? And God says, my name is, I am. And the Greek translation of that is me. And that’s what Jesus uses here.

So they come in, they he says, who are you looking for? They say, Jesus of Nazareth. And he says the name of God. He says, I am. And they just tumble like dominoes, who’s in control in the story, this massive show of force. And he speaks the name. His name, the name of God, and everyone tumbles down. It’s unbelievable Who’s in control in this moment.

Jesus. And then I love this. Jesus answered, I told you that I am. If you are looking for me, then let these men go. And this is an imperative in the Greek there it’s a command. So 600 shoulders, soldiers show up and with a word, he tumbles them down and then he starts dishing out commands. He’s yeah, these are not the disciples you’re looking for.

And they just get to go, what? These soldiers just let them go. I guess that Jesus can just do that, he’s dishing out command. So the point that John is trying to give us all throughout this text, and there’s so many of them that I will gloss over and I can’t talk about is Jesus is firmly fixed and he is in charge in this entire.

Chapter. He’s deciding what happens when it happens all throughout. Then this happens. Then Simon Peter, who had an A sword, drew it and struck the high priest servant cutting off his right ear. The servant’s name was Malus. There’s some fascinating stuff there. I don’t have time for Jesus commanded Peter, put your sword away.

Shall I not drink the cup the father has given me? In other words, he’s saying this was part of the plan. Peter and my people. If you wanna be a disciple of me, we don’t do the sword thing. The Roman soldiers, the religious leaders who came to got me, they do get me. They do the sword thing. My people, my followers, my way.

We don’t do the sword thing. Put the sword away because I’m gonna get this done, but I’m gonna get it done in a different kind of way. So he scolds Peter in the most adamant way in this passage. So Jesus isn’t a victim in this story. He’s the director of the drama. So the first thing we see about how Jesus shows up in this text and how counterintuitive it is to the way the rest of the world operates is this, that.

In his arrest, the he is the king that initiates surrender. Irony of ironies. It’s just saturated. In irony, all throughout this chapter that he initiates surrender. It’s like he steps forward, he shows them, ha, I could take you all out with a word just so you know. But yeah, go ahead and take me. So this is how it shows up.

Then we move scenes to a scene or act two in the narrative, and we go to a courtroom, but John paints this beautiful picture of sort of two trials being taken, taking place at the same time. Jesus gets dragged before this courtroom, and Peter and some of his, some of the other disciples can tag along and.

Try and watch what’s going on, but then there’s a sort of secretive courtroom taking place at the same time. So check this out. Two trials, one in the courtroom, and one by the campfire. So Peter is on trial. Secretly and Jesus is on trial. So Jesus is on trial before all of the people with power and authority to take his life.

And Peter is on trial. Remember, this is Peter who just had a sword willing to attack 600 armed soldiers like crazy. But this is the trial and this is how it starts. Peter had to wait outside at the door. The other disciple who was known by the high priest came back, spoke to the servant girl on duty and there, and brought Peter in.

You aren’t one of this man’s disciples too, are you? She asked. He replied, I am not. This is the negative version of I am. This is. Ook. Amen. So John is putting all these little nuggets to point to us like Jesus says I am. And then Peter says, I am not now. Just a moment ago, Peter is trying to fight. So if you’re familiar with the autonomic nervous system, this is our fight or flight response, right?

There’s fight. And or fight or flight. Hide or freeze, right? This is what happens when we’re in tense situations. So Peter’s already tried fight. And now he’s hiding. He’s I can’t be associated with this because I’m under I’m in danger. Meanwhile, literally the word in the text is, meanwhile, Jesus is in the courtroom facing those who could take his life and he’s cool and calm and collected.

And I wish I could go into all of those dialogues because he they ask him. What have you been teaching and who do you say you are and all this stuff, and he says you know exactly what I’ve been teaching. I do it publicly. I’m not hiding. I’m in the open. I am not like what Peter’s doing in the courtyard.

I’m not hiding a single thing like a lamb led to the slaughter. He did not open his mouth to defend himself because he knew who he was. And interestingly, he controls his entire trial. I wish I could go into those details, but this is what we learn. Our king, king Jesus is the kind of king who needs no defense.

Peter, who could have been the one that spoke to his defense, instead of doing that, he hides and he hides. And Jesus says, I need no defense. I know exactly what I’m doing. Everything’s going in as planned. So then they pick up and they move to scene number three. They take Jesus oh. At one point they, they’re like so frustrated with him.

They slap him in the face. We saw that, right? And that’s again, this sort of like exertion of power. Like we’re trying to scare him into submission. We’re trying to stop him from doing what he’s doing, trying to stop him from speaking the words that he’s speaking. So we like scare him, threaten him, slap him in the face, and he’s just like, why do you slap me?

It’s fine. He’s cool and calm and collected. They take him from there to the governor’s palace. And then this happens. And j then the Jews, Jewish leaders took Jesus from Caiaphas to the Palace of the Roman governor. By now, it was early morning, which by the way, this whole trial was against the law, against the Jewish law.

They’re trying to they’re pretty shady stuff. And to avoid the ceremonial uncles, they did not enter the palace because they wanted to be able to eat the Passover. So in this text there’s been multiple layers of anxiety that we’ve already seen. One is a political anxiety, in the Roman Empire was trying to keep the peace in this region.

And there had been some uprisings in the recent years and in some neighboring towns there had been uprising and it hadn’t gone well. And I think that’s part of the reason why Pilate allows for 600 men to go and collect to Jesus is he’s trying to keep the peace. They’re afraid that this Jesus personality is gonna.

Cause too much trouble and threaten the Roman Empire and their control of this particular region. So we’ve seen that, but there’s also this undercurrent of religious anxiety on the part of these leaders. So this is what we’ve seen so far. Political fear and religious fear, because why? Why do these religious leaders hate Jesus so much?

It’s because they believed deep down that if they were really good and if they followed the right teachings, they could force God’s hand. And they could get God to act on their behalf and they could overthrow Rome and get a nation back and have control again. And so it was really important that for them to get their theology right and force the people to behave in the right way.

And Jesus comes on the scene and he starts teaching stuff that they weren’t teaching. And so theologically, they’re. Extremely nervous ’cause they’re afraid of their relationship with God and we’re getting our theology wrong. It’s like religious fear and anxiety and you see it show up in that passage.

See, they wanted to be able to eat Passover. ’cause that’s really important to our religion. So like we have an agenda over here to get rid of this Jesus guy, but we can’t break the Passover rules. They’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, and they have this anxiety about obeying this rule so they don’t go into the palace.

And this is this tension. Can you sense that fight or flight response on the part of the politicians involved on a part of the religious elite involved? So Pilate takes Jesus in and asks him a question. He says, this Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, are you the king of the Jews?

This is a really important question for pilot to ask because pilot was on thin ice. There’d been some uprisings, partially because he was a really heavy handed ruler and he’d taken some money from the temple and used it to do some projects around the town. There was an uprising and it hadn’t gone well, so he was on thin ice with the emperor and stuff, and so he was trying to keep the peace and so his anxiety is around his position and his power, and this is what’s going on with for Pontius Pilate.

He’s like this highly anxious character in the story. And he’s worried about a king uprising. ’cause if suddenly someone’s trying to threaten the Roman empire and it happens on his watch, not so good for him. So this is what Jesus does when Pilate asks, are you a king? Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world.

If it were my servant would fight, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders, but now my kingdom is from another place. So you are a king then. Pilate said Pilate, Jesus answered. You say that I’m a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into this world is to testify to the truth.

Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. This is a very complicated conversation, almost a philosophical conversation around truth and all this stuff that takes place between Jesus and Pilate. But I don’t have time to get into it. It’s fascinating. But essentially what Jesus is saying is.

Yes, absolutely I’m a king, but it’s not the kind of king you think I am the kind of king who comes to demonstrate by my own death that true power is a different kind of power. It comes from a different place. This is that whole conversation boiled down. He says, the way of Jesus leverages the power of non nonviolent self-giving fearless in the face of death.

Love. This is the truth he’s speaking of. He says, I came not just to teach this, I came to live the kind of life to demonstrate that real authority, real power, and I’m gonna demonstrate it’s more effective than your kind of sword and force and power kind of power. This is a different kind of power. Jesus is speaking.

That’s the truth. And I’m gonna show you. By dictating the entire it’s, this whole chapter is pic it, it’s like a picture of Jesus taking his throne. He’s marching towards his throne as king of kings and Lord of lords, and he mounts Gha and his throne just happens to be across. That’s what the story is telling us.

It’s a different kind of kingdom than. Pilot doesn’t know what to do with this, but he’s this guy’s very strange, but it doesn’t seem like he’s trying to take over Rome. So he goes out to the crowds and he says, I don’t see anything wrong with him. But you guys have this tradition. And he’s, again, trying to appease them and make them happy.

Regardless, I gotta hedge my bets. Like I, I’m gonna give them some autonomy so they feel like they’ve got some control. It’s your tradition that our release a prisoner, right? And so he says, do you want Jesus or do you want barabis? And look at a little nugget of truth that John Ke puts us in this passage.

Do you want Jesus the king of the Jews? This self-giving love kind of king, this self-sacrificial kind of king, this king that does everything backwards. Is that the king you want? Or do you want Barass? No, they say not him. Give us Barbi. Now, Barass had taken part in uprising. We want the kind of guy that makes sense to us.

What makes sense to us is a guy who starts uprisings. This is what makes sense to us. And so they didn’t want a kingdom of peace that Jesus offered. They wanted a man willing to lead an uprising against Rome. This is so counterintuitive. It’s so backwards that they didn’t have categories for this, and humanity did not have categories for this until the cross.

And the only reason we have categories for this today is because we get to look back on the way Jesus behaved in the past. And so here’s the final thing we see about King Jesus and how counterintuitive he is king Jesus. He’s the kind of king. Who rules with cuffs on, like he’s in the seat of political empire with cuffs on.

He’s I’m in charge. I’m in charge. You think you’re in control, Pilate, you think you’re in control? Religious elite? No. I’m in charge. And so the question we asked in the beginning of the message was, where does true power reside when life appears to be out of control? And it’s this. Real power is found in sur in the surrender of the cross, not the survival of the fittest.

This is true power. This is the teachings of Jesus. Real power is found in the surrender of the cross, not the survival of the fittest. And this is actually what it means to be made in the image of God. Being made in the image of God is a capacity as a creature to be able to make decisions that is contrary to our biological survival of the fittest instincts.

We actually, if we follow the way of Jesus and we receive the love of God deep down in our souls, it gives us a capacity to go the same road that he goes to go and choose the cross to cruise. To choose self-sacrifice rather than self-promotion, to choose relinquishment of power rather than seizing of power.

This is what it means to be made in the image of God. Martin Luther King said it beautifully when he said this. I have lived these last few years with the conviction that unearned suffering is redemptive. There are some who still find the cross a stumbling block, but I am more convinced than ever before that it is the power of God unto salvation.

And eight years later, he was murdered. But his policy about non-violent resistance was more transformative than all of the violent attempts that preceded it. So Martin Luther King gets more done. By saying things like this and surrendering, then others try. Who tried to use violence to do so how in the world might we learn to follow Jesus in this way?

And this is where the rubber meets the road, isn’t it? This is hard stuff. I wish it was easy. Like it’s one thing to first to understand that this is what Jesus teaches. Jesus is saying. If you’re gonna be a follower of me, this is how we operate. We don’t operate by the sword. We operate by the cross.

We don’t operate by power and influence that the kingdom, the world says we operate by self-giving, self-sacrificial love. This is how we do it. But it’s really hard because we have this deep seated brokenness in. That works all the way down into our neurobiology that prevents us from showing up this way.

And so there’s a few spiritual practices I’d like to recommend. One is breath work. That four second breath that I gave you at the beginning of the message, hold it for four seconds, then breathe out for four seconds. Hold for four. Breathe in. Did you know that brain scientists recognized.

That this is one of the few things that you have direct access to change your autonomic nervous system. You can actually reduce your anxiety, your fight or flight response by doing that almost nothing else, like your digestive system shuts down all these other things when you go into fight or flight and you stop thinking, correct, like straight, you start thinking protectively, you do all this stuff right.

But if you start breathing slowly, you actually, it enables you to think at a calm down the systems to start your digestion back up and just think more like the way of Jesus. So I encourage you to try that meditation on some of these texts. John 18, mark four. 35 4. Maybe you can memorize Psalm 23.

In that Psalm, it has this beautiful line that says he prepares a table for me in the presence of my enemies. Maybe you need to memorize that and say in the scariest, most out of control situation possible, Jesus is preparing a feast for me, and he wants to just hang out. Eat a meal together.

Maybe you need celebrate recovery. If you have this like knee jerk reaction of anger that just keeps on coming back or road rage or whatever it may be. This is a community of people who do really deep, deep work around rewiring some of those deeper inclinations and impulses in us. So check that out.

See a counselor counselors are really good at helping you access some of these natural biological responses so that you can show up in a more human and a live way with other people. Solitude and silence is another powerful way. Dirk. Williams was a Dutch Anabaptist preacher who was arrested for heresy in the 15 hundreds.

And he was arrested because he was teaching this truth and some other things, adult baptism, these sorts of things. But the Anabaptist believed that. This kind of self-giving, nonviolent, self-sacrificial kind of love was the way you should be. And so he was arrested he was put in this facility one night.

He was able to climb out the window and escape, and he was a sort of gaunt guy. He’d been in jail for so long and he was able to scamper across a frozen river and made it to the other side. But one of his pursuers, one of the guards chased after him was not, or he was a little bit more well fed than Dirk was, and he broke through the ice.

And he started to shout for help and Dirk stopped and he had this opportunity to get away scot free, but instead, because he believed these truths, he turned around and he went back out on the ice and he rescued this guard. And the guard was just overwhelmed with gratitude and he wanted to let Dirk go, but the prison ward and just shouted across, no, we must arrest him.

So they did. They arrested him and several weeks later he was he was put to death. For the heresy of some of what I just taught in the day, but that story was so powerful that it actually became the bedrock of religious freedom in Europe at the time. And there was a statue erected to just mark this kind of posture.

And one of the reasons why we have separation of church state some of those ideas or religious freedom in our world today is because of this act of self-giving love. Remember, real power is found in surrender of the cross, not the survival of the fittest. And Hannah’s gonna sing this song over you.

And in this song, there’s this line that says this. There’s a strength that rises up in me to know that you’ve gone here before me, and that’s my invitation to you is to recognize this is hard work to figure out how do we become the kind of people like church if we want to be followers of Jesus.

This is the way. We are not a people of the sword. We are a people of the cross. We’re not a people of glory and of power like the way of the world. We are a people who choose humble surrender to Jesus and his way. How do we do that? First and foremost, we must recognize that Jesus has done it first, and he did it to demonstrate his unconditional self-giving, self-sacrificial love for you.

And for me. And then from that place of strength, we learn because he’s gone before us, there’s a strength that rises up. So she’s just gonna sing a little bit of this song over us.