Embracing God's Sovereignty and Our New Identity in Christ

1) "Baptisms are when people come and say, hey, I want the church to know that I love and I follow Jesus. And it's making their faith public. You can have a private faith, and it's important to have a private faith. It's important to have a personal relationship with Jesus, but we don't just get to have one personal relationship. We actually have a corporate relationship that we experience Christ in our relationship with one another. And so baptism is a chance for those who would identify as followers of Christ, trusting in his sacrifice for their salvation to declare that to the church. And they do that by, in a way, modeling what Jesus did, which is dying to their old life and being raised again to new life." [24:00] (40 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2) "Two weeks ago, I talked about how sin is the vandalism of shalom. That is, it is the vandalism of the peace by which the world was created. That the world was created in wholeness, unity, and harmony. And when sin entered in, it shattered it all. That sin is the undoing, the breakdown of creation. And the reason we struggle with it so much, the reason we're so deeply affected by it, either our own sin or sin done to us, is because we don't have the resources within ourselves to deal with it. We don't have the resources to deal with it. We're created to deal with it. So God did, by giving us Christ." [27:50] (35 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3) "Thankfully for us, the gospel breaks that. Thankfully that God, when he says, you have been and acted in a way of, as rebels in a treasonous way, you have betrayed me. When he stands in that judgment, we have this wonderful, beautiful thing, which is his gospel, by which we can be restored and have that judgment removed. The gospel breaks the power of sin. Talk about that. Two weeks ago, where the gospel of, and believing in Jesus gives us this new life and this ability to live beyond the power of sin. It also, though, is the place where we see the judgment of God absorbed, where God's wrath is not demonstrated to those who deserve it, but was demonstrated to Jesus who didn't deserve it." [31:24] (54 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4) "God can't be good if he doesn't provide a way out. If he doesn't provide some sort of solution. And that's what God does, is he comes and he says, listen, this judgment is coming, and it's coming over all the land of Israel, and everyone is guilty. The Israelites were guilty of sedition against God. You know what? We read elsewhere in the Old Testament, referring back to this time, that the Israelites worshiped the Egyptian gods. That in their homes, they had shrines to those gods. That as much as they believed, and asked God to save them, they still worshiped the gods of the culture around them. That they were guilty. But God comes, and in his mercy and his grace, because he is good, provides a solution. Provides a solution that will absorb his judgment, absorb the wrath, so that the people don't have to." [37:12] (56 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5) "To be forgiven is to have and receive a new life as a child of God. You are no longer a sinner. You're no longer identified by those actions. We may still commit those actions, but they don't identify us. Therefore, you're not allowed to say I'm an angry person. Right? You're not allowed to say I'm a lustful person. You're not allowed to say I'm an evil person. You can't say that. You might do those things. But they can't be your identifier. I'm a child of God who sins. I'm not a sinner. Right? I'm not defined by that. But because we've become so accustomed to those identifiers, we don't know what it means to walk in newness of life." [53:01] (42 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6) "Our preoccupation with self -forgiveness is to say this. It's to consider your judgment greater than God's. God says I judge sin. It requires death. Therefore, an innocent one will die and suffer in your place. Yeah, but I think it's worse than that. It's to consider your sin greater than God's grace. It's basically to say this. Jesus didn't suffer enough. I need to suffer too. Do you hear that? No, no. Jesus writhing in pain physically. Emotionally betrayed and rejected. Denied and abandoned by his closest friends. Spiritually forsaken by God. That wasn't enough. I need to punish myself some more. I need to beat myself up a little bit more." [52:11] (55 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7) "When we look at our sin and hate what it did to Jesus, we can be set free from it. When we look at our sin and see what the devastation that it's caused, but see that Jesus delivers us from its power, we can walk in new life. That is only true in Christ. It is not found anywhere else. No other religion. No other worldview. No other ideology. No government. No religion. No relationship can give you that that Jesus has already given you." [58:18] (27 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)