Understanding Faith, Works, and the Significance of Communion

In my sermon, I discussed the common misconception that by following the law, we can earn God's love and acceptance. I emphasized that the law is not a means to earn God's love, but rather a tutor that helps us understand our need for the gospel. Every time we find ourselves incapable of obeying the law, it's a reminder that we can't do this on our own. I also touched on the concept of faith and works, explaining that while we don't need to perform good works to earn faith, a faith that works is a faith that produces good works. A faith that doesn't produce works is a worthless faith.

In the second part of my sermon, I discussed the significance of communion for followers of Jesus. Communion is a time for us to remember that Jesus is the perfect, spotless lamb that secured a relationship with God that we could never secure on our own. Every time we partake in communion, we are proclaiming Christ's death until he comes again. I also touched on the importance of letting the Spirit lead in our lives and in our prayers for others.

Key Takeaways:
- The law is not a means to earn God's love, but a tutor that helps us understand our need for the gospel ([13:46 ])
- A faith that works is a faith that produces good works. A faith that doesn't produce works is a worthless faith ([15:53 ])
- Communion is a time for followers of Jesus to remember that Jesus is the perfect, spotless lamb that secured a relationship with God that we could never secure on our own ([32:48 ])
- Every time we partake in communion, we are proclaiming Christ's death until he comes again ([33:17 ])
- We must let the Spirit lead in our lives and in our prayers for others ([08:24 ])

Bible Reading:
1) John 14:6 [06:26 ]
2) Matthew 28:19-20 [07:00 ]
3) Romans 10:9-10 [07:26 ]

Observation Questions:
1) In John 14:6, what does Jesus mean when He says He is "the way, the truth, and the life"?
2) In Matthew 28:19-20, what is the command that Jesus gives to His disciples?
3) How does Romans 10:9-10 describe the process of salvation?

Interpretation Questions:
1) How does Jesus being "the way, the truth, and the life" relate to the question of knowing God personally?
2) What does the command in Matthew 28:19-20 imply about our relationship with God and others?
3) How does Romans 10:9-10 answer the question "Can I know God personally?"

Application Questions:
1) How does understanding Jesus as "the way, the truth, and the life" impact your daily decisions and actions?
2) In what ways can you practically fulfill the command in Matthew 28:19-20 in your current context?
3) Reflecting on Romans 10:9-10, how can you share the process of salvation with someone who is seeking to know God personally?
4) Can you identify a specific area in your life where you need to experience God's presence more deeply?
5) How can you make your relationship with God a greater priority in your life and heart?

Hey everybody, Mark here. Thanks so much for tuning in! It was a fun episode today answering the question, "Can I know God personally?"

We've been exploring God in our series called "Explore God," where we've been answering a lot of big picture questions about faith and what it means to be a follower of Jesus. This is the conclusion of our series, so thank you so much for following along with us. Thank you for engaging with us, whether that be on social media, sending in your questions, or texting us at our text number, 650-600-042.

I'd love to encourage you to continue to engage with us if you have questions or thoughts about the podcast or about anything else that we're doing. I would love to hear from you, and I'd love to try to answer those for you.

I'd also love to encourage you, if you can, to get to a physical campus or location in our upcoming series as well, which we're hinting at at the end of the podcast today. It's going to be a really amazing series about the legacy that we leave behind.

So thanks again so much for tuning in. Thank you for your generosity and for those who are giving their time and resources to make this show possible. We cannot do it without you.

Let's go ahead and jump into the final midweek podcast about our "Explore God" series.

Welcome, everybody, to the Meno Midweek Podcast. My name is Mark.

My name is Jessica. Phil's with us today.

Hey everybody!

This is a bit of a fun and challenging episode for us because we're actually recording this prior to the message being given.

That is correct! Yep, this is like a Meno pre-midweek.

Yeah, why are we doing this? What are you doing?

Oh, do you not know?

I don't think so.

Amazing! Luren just sends out calendar invites and asks stuff around we don't know about your calendar.

Sure, sure, you could. It's totally fine. It looks crazy most of the time.

So we will be taking kind of our leadership team and some of our campus pastors to a conference called Exponential.

Oh yes! It's actually a Midwest organization out of Chicago, but they do these local hub mini-conferences, and one is happening at Three Crosses in the East Bay. I think it's like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or something of next week. We'll all be over there.

You know, when you normally think about conferences, they become really big, really involved, and really expensive to go to. So in general, when they're in your backyard, especially out here, I'm learning, in our backyard, more rarely, I think it's helpful to try and give people a chance to check it out. So that's where we'll be.

That's fun! Do you have a favorite conference that you've been to?

Oh, I didn't go to a ton. We used to go to the Orange Conferences as a student staff out in Atlanta, Georgia. They were always difficult because it was very Southern, like, "Hey, you have a church on every corner, and your people are barely committed." And we were like, "No, not as much as this stuff." So that was always a little more difficult, but usually there was some really good stuff. The best part about it was just the connection, hanging out with other staff and our friends. Every night, we'd have dinner together, and some of us would go early sometimes to hang out in Tennessee and things like that. So that was always the best part of those trips.

Yeah, fun! Did you ever go to one?

I went to a few. I think this was prior to Meno, and there is nothing like a good old Pentecostal conference. I went to one at a church in Hawaii that was really cool. It was very challenging for me because I can understand and there are parts of Pentecostal that I like, but there are also parts that I don't. There was a bit of both at this, but the worship was insanely fun and, man, so powerful. But there were also people getting slain in the spirit up on stage, so I was like, "I don't know what to do with that." But I still left feeling like God spoke to me.

Yeah, interesting. There's just, I don't know, a lot to explore about God.

Yeah, nice just to sneak it in there. This is the last week of exploring God and asking questions about faith and what to think about God and the Bible. It was a pretty light week; there wasn't anything too heavy.

Yeah, nothing too major. So Phil, what question will you be answering this weekend?

But last weekend, for those who are listening, it's the message that I did answer, but as I'm recording, it's the message I haven't answered yet, but we'll answer this weekend.

Yeah, it's fine. Totally great, normal.

Yeah, so we're finishing the series with the question, "Can I know God personally?" All the questions leading up to this—Does my life have purpose? Is there a God? Is Jesus really God? Is the Bible real and reliable?—are all hopefully kind of building credibility in the conversation to go, "Okay, so if the Bible is reliable and God is real and Jesus is actually God, and the purpose of my life is to live in this relationship with Him forever, then how do I do that?" That's sort of the setup of the series.

Sure. And then hopefully for some people, God was using discussion groups that were happening at campuses along the way as well. It's been really fun to hear reports of God using really specific examples of conversations and groups where, for a lot of people, this is maybe a conversation that exists in their head, but they have just not been able to have it with other people. Kudos to campuses for making that space possible.

Yeah, and so you were strategic in obviously choosing what messages and what questions we were asking leading up to this final question. How and why did we land at where we landed?

Yeah, well, the series as constructed that the 165 churches are going through, there are a couple more questions that they're covering that we are not. We kind of included it in the question of "Does God exist?" We sort of incorporated the question of pain and suffering. John did that one. And then in the question of "Is Jesus God?" I sort of incorporated the exclusivity question; that was a different one. So those were two additional weeks that we weren't covering because of some unique time constraints for us around Meno 150.

But I think ultimately all of this stuff is really helpful; it's a great conversation. But what makes it, I think, most helpful is that I would choose to shape my life with it. I would say, you know, Jesus isn't just somebody I've learned about, but somebody I live in relationship to.

Hopefully, finishing the series gives people a chance to, if you've ever been at a Christian camp, right? This is kind of like the last night of camp. Everything all week has kind of led up to this moment. For some people, it's likely a chance for them to reaffirm their decision to follow Jesus, to say, "All right, you know what? I've kind of drifted over the last few years, and I do want to know God personally. I do want this to take a greater priority in my life and heart."

For other people, it's probably the very first time that they're going to make this decision. For some people, they may kind of go, "This isn't for me," but they don't know it. God could have deposited some seeds in their heart and life that when things get difficult or when they face a setback, God's going to bring all this back up, and maybe they'll be ready to respond then.

I feel like that's kind of all out of our hands. We're called to be faithful; God's the one that's fruitful.

I think that's such an important distinction too. You've said this almost every week: there's nothing any of us humanly can do to bring people to Christ. We can just help and show them the way, but in the end, it's about letting the Spirit lead. I think that's just such a good reminder that as you're praying for people, as you're praying for your friends or other people you see in the church, just remember that you're doing the right thing by praying for them. We just have to pray that the Spirit nudges them enough to actually do something and take that step.

Yeah, and I think sometimes we don't do anything because we have mistaken our responsibility for God's responsibility. We're like, "Oh, I don't want to mess it up." You know, cool, I get it, but you're giving yourself too much credit and not enough at the same time. God's got it, and He's just asking you to take a step.

As we're entering into conversations around this, I'm just thinking through the lens of conversations I've had in the past with people that say, "I'm a good person. I try not to hurt people. I don't try to lie. Isn't that enough? What else could God want?"

Yeah, well, and I do think there's a—I won't mention this in my message—but I do think that there is this underlying operating system for most of humanity where we have kind of like two scales that live in our head. We just think, "Well, if my good can outweigh my bad, that's all I need. I just need to get in."

I think that works if God is like us, if God is a mix of good and bad, right? Then, yeah, I guess you can overlook the bad if there's more good. I would say there's nobody, you know, that's just like a person who's never done a good thing in their life. But the standard by which we understand God through the Scriptures is that God is perfect. The word is "Holy." He's set apart.

So then the problem becomes, well, if God's holy and to be in a perfect and permanent relationship with God, we also need to be holy, then the "good enough, more good than bad" scale system doesn't work. You know, I mentioned a passage in my message that's not like a super fun one from Romans: "None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one."

We can go to the Old Testament that talks about all the good deeds of this audience being like filthy rags. I've used the phrase before: good deeds apart from a good relationship with God are an incompatible currency. So we might go, "God, this is amazing! I've done all this amazing work for you! Here you go!" And we stack—we give Him a stack of money that represents the good deeds of our life, and He's like, "Oh, I don't accept this currency."

That's the paradigm, right? We go to Matthew 7. Jesus is describing people that would sit in judgment and said, "Many will come to me and say, 'Look at all these things I've accomplished in your name.'" They'll kind of run through the list, and if being good was the standard, like, they're getting in because the list is better than all of us. The list is unreal.

And the list of the religious leaders that Jesus was regularly interacting with—the Pharisees and the Sadducees—the list of their good deeds was unreal. But Jesus says, "Depart from me." He doesn't say, "Because you didn't do enough right." That "that's what I'm good enough" would seem to indicate. He doesn't even say, "Depart from me; you're not good enough." He says, "Depart from me; I never knew you."

Right? So this question of knowing God personally sort of takes focus, and we go, "Oh, this is a really big deal. This is really important that we understand relationship is the lynch—it’s the fulcrum of our standing with God."

As we kind of talked through in the message, that relationship is not something we can earn in any way, shape, or form.

As you were talking, I just imagined myself calling someone a dirty rag and being able to grab that and use that scripturally, so thank you for that!

Hey, here to help! Here to help!

And then I was also thinking about how we could reframe what it might mean to be a "good person" and how that—how good deeds could then be transferred to what it means to be in a good relationship with God. Would you say that that is really what God is pursuing in us? Instead of us living—well, I guess it would be both—but God living us in a way that would represent God, but in order to know what that is, we'd have to have a relationship with Him first, right?

For sure! Yeah, I think order is really important, right? If you think about the Old Testament law—hundreds of commandments—we think about ten, which are true, but there are actually hundreds of them. And then there was this thing called the Mishna, which means "the fence." The Mishna was a set of additional rules that the Jewish leaders at the time had built. The principle was, "Let's build a fence around the law so that you can never break the law."

This was Jesus was regularly critiquing—the Mishna, not the law. So when, like, for instance, Jesus got criticized for the way that He would navigate Sabbath, they would go, "Hey, you can't do that on Sabbath." Most of the time, what they were citing was not the law; they were citing the Mishna.

Jesus is like, "Oh, I'm not violating the law! What are you guys talking about?" And then He would drop in the bigger principle, right? "Hey, Sabbath was made by God for us, not by us for God."

The idea that you saw as sort of a false choice in the Old Testament over and over again was that somehow by following the law, you can get to God. So I perform and behave to a certain level in hopes that God might love me and then would accept me, and I'd be in relationship.

Well, Paul talks about it, especially in Galatians, and he talks about the fact that the law is actually like our tutor. So if you're struggling in a subject and you go, "I need somebody to help me; I don't get it," he's using that same concept in Greek, and he's saying the law is sort of sitting down with us and helping us understand our need for the gospel.

Every time we would look at the law and find that we were incapable of obeying it, it was like the tutor of the law saying, "You can't do this on your own." You saw that throughout all of Jewish history. The religious leaders at the time that Jesus was doing His earthly ministry—a big portion of the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus doing that "You have heard that it was said, but I say to you" stuff.

He's basically going, "Oh, you think you're good enough? Let me just tell you how much you aren't good enough." So you'd say, "Oh, you've heard that it was said you shouldn't kill anyone? Great! But I'll tell you, if you have hate for them in your heart, you've already killed them."

I think there's this regular opportunity for, whether it's the law as in the hundreds of laws from the Old Testament or, like I mentioned in my sermon, sort of the design we have—like if you're not a Christian, you're not a person of faith at all, you still violate your own standards. The things you're trying to do—forget the Bible—you go, "I want to be a good person," and you define being a good person on your own, and you violate your own expectations.

Even that can be a boundary that says, "Oh, there must be—if I'm going to be made right, it's not going to be through my performance."

On the other side, when we do come to know Jesus and sort of the John 15 principle that as we abide in Him, we walk this faith out, there's transformation. A sort of summary of the book of James would be, "We don't have to have works to earn faith, but a working faith is a faith that works, and a faith that doesn't produce works is a worthless faith."

Let that spin around your head for a bit!

But it is about order and sequence. If we are trying to obey certain laws or quote-unquote be a good person in hopes that God would love us, that is tyranny. It's exhausting.

But if we can sit in the reality of our identity that we are loved by God no matter what—whether you're a follower of Jesus or not, He loves you. He's crazy about you. If you're a follower of Jesus, you said, "I'm submitting my life to the plan that God has, not the plan that I have."

Now, out of that love, acceptance, and relationship, I begin to live out this kind of transformed vision of the different way that Jesus modeled.

Yeah, man, what do you think it is about this conversation about being able to believe that there is a God out there that thinks I'm worthy of dying for? What is it about us in our cultural moment, in our individualism, however you want to say that, that makes it so hard to say yes to that?

I believe that, and I want that for myself.

Yeah, because a lot of times, I mean, people will say, "I'm good. I'm good with just living by my own standards."

So, yeah, I mean, I think that one of the deepest sort of cultural pressures that we feel is—I would describe it as kind of the idol of self-sufficiency. We don't believe it, by the way. We actually don't even—we're not consistent in the way we live this out in our culture, but we want to communicate that we are.

I think social media is such an easy example to go find it where—I'm sure you've seen the images where it's like, "This is what we put on social media," and then it's like the zoom-out or the picture that didn't make it into social media—like, "This is reality."

I think lives are so—in our culture—are so consistent with that idea where it's like, "My marriage is awesome," but nobody knows what we're fighting about or nobody knows that we've devolved into roommates.

"My kids are perfect," but nobody knows what I have to do at home, the way that I have to be awful with them to sort of get them to perform that way. Nobody knows that I'm so concerned with sort of this external appearance of, "We got it. We're good."

I think in Silicon Valley, in the Bay Area, this is heavy. This is really hard, especially if you live in or come from a culture or a heritage where this feels like it's kind of hardwired into you.

"I will have academic success. I will have career success. I will get into that school. I will go into that line of work. My family will look like this."

It really only just takes kind of one brick getting pulled out from that wall for the whole thing to collapse.

I think a lot of it is—I want to try. For me to admit that that's not true to a certain extent is admitting that my entire life is a lie, and that's a really big idol to come down.

It's not usually one—unless my life is falling apart—it's not usually one that I'm like super pumped about revealing to other people, right?

But this idea of the lie of self-sufficiency will eventually show itself true. Eventually, you will hit something you can't solve—a diagnosis, a layoff, a really difficult relational breakup. There will be something that reminds you you are not built to do this on your own.

Without God, we cling to people, but we ask people to be God. Turns out they can't be, even the best people with the best of intentions.

What we hope for is that Meno and churches like us become places where you can depend on God, and then when you depend on people, it's not just you leaning on them; it's you leaning on them and then all of you leaning on God together.

When people let you down, you have a framework for that. You understand, like, "Oh, he's imperfect; she's imperfect." Together, we're trusting someone who is perfect, who can handle all of this, who can take the weight of my disappointment, of my failed expectations.

I think something that could become really hopeless can become really hopeful.

As you are planning to close out your message, I think there is an analogy that was made of a court case. I thought that was really clever.

Is that a Phil thing, or is this something you've seen before?

Oh, this is kind of a preacher line. I mean, I adapted it a little bit, but yeah, I mean, I think we often think about ourselves—if you think about the way you picture yourself in a courtroom, I think it says something about your personality where you place yourself, right?

When I am Mike Ross—what? Dude, let's go! Suit reference!

Mike Ross is—I really want to be Harvey, but I just—

Mike Ross, dude, I get it! But you have a photographic memory, so yeah, it's great! And you're married to a princess or something now?

Yes, Megan Markle plays his wife.

Yeah, I do know that part's true. The photographic memory part is not so much, but the miss is a princess.

I thought you were saying you were married to Megan Markle, and I was like, "That feels like it'd be problematic."

So, yeah, no, I'm a rag.

Got it, got it, got it!

I think there's something really important about understanding that in the grand scheme of eternity, even if you said, "Hey, I'm going to serve as the lawyer," you're serving as your own lawyer. You are the defendant.

There is a case being made against you, and the case being made against you is your own actions—like it's your own life. It's not just your behavior; it's your motivations.

Then it's not only your behavior and your motivations; it's the terminal illness of sin that you were given before you were born.

I sort of used this metaphor of if you were in that case and you gave the best opening statement you possibly could, and you had amazing rebuttal questions for the prosecution's witness, and then you had amazing character witnesses for your defense, and then you just had this incredible closing argument, you would kind of know two things.

I think if you were honest, one, as good as you might feel like you're doing, you would observe the fact that you're going to lose. There's no doubt about it. You would just—there—the evidence is overwhelming.

We think about cases that sometimes get overturned. We think about what's called circumstantial evidence, where it's like, "Oh, you kind of argue it either way." There's no arguing it either way in the landscape of eternity.

No one will try to—nobody's going to be like, "Oh, yeah, no, that's true. I did think that. I did do that. I did compromise there." Like, period.

Then I think the other thing you'd observe in that scenario is that God is the judge, and He would be presiding over the case. But I think you'd see Him tearing up. You'd see Him deeply emotional over you and the state of your soul.

I just kind of hypothesized what would it look like if you're declared guilty by that judge. The gavel slams, and then at sentencing, instead of you getting put in handcuffs, the judge takes off the robe, comes around the front, and allows the handcuffs to be put on Him.

Then He's taken out; He's put on death row. He waits, and then He's executed. The standing that He had, you get, and the judgment that you had, He took. That's the gospel.

I think the idea of, "Well, let me defend myself," there's no defending yourself. "Let me fix it." There's no fixing it. "Let me just admit that I'm wrong." Cool, great, but the consequences are still the consequences.

I think if we can understand that, we get to see a more complete, honest depiction of God's character. He is perfectly just and perfectly loving, and He's so loving that His love satisfied His own justice so that He could have a perfect and permanent relationship with you.

In your transcript, which is what Mark and I read to prepare for this, you use the word "weeping," that the judge was weeping. I had to take a step back and like, "Ooh, I got to process that one for a little bit," because that's powerful.

To be able—I mean, I think all of us have either seen a lawyer show or been in a courtroom or something, and so actually to visualize it that way as someone who's a visual learner, just to be like, "Oh, okay, yep, that's great and hard."

Well, we think—the moment I think about a judge, I think about someone who is physically and sort of emotionally trying to stay detached. They're trying to avoid a sense in which they are favoring one side or another. They're trying to stay impartial.

The fact that God can perfectly judge when in reality He is not impartial towards you—He loves you. He loves you in spite of the fact that we are so broken and so sinful. His judgment could be satisfied by Him honestly having never done anything ever for us, and He would still be morally justified in doing that.

There's a quote from Tim Keller I'm not using this weekend, but I think is really helpful. He says, "To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear."

Think about that sentence. But to be fully known and truly loved? Well, a lot like being loved by God. It's what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.

I think ultimately, you know, this picture of a personal relationship with God is not just that God sort of gets us out of hell and gets us into heaven. It includes that, but I think it is also that is the means—the end is that we get to be in a perfect and permanent relationship with God.

That happens in heaven—spoiler alert! It eventually happens in new heavens and new earth and a restored creation.

I think that's a beautiful picture, hopefully for people to think about, "Man, if I've written off this possibility that God could love me that way or that God would make a way for me," hopefully this weekend will show them different.

It's beautiful, and I think we are planning on ending the service with communion as well. So let's explore that for a second. What is communion? Why do we do it? Why does it matter? What does it stand for?

Yeah, so there is a practice that all of Jesus' disciples would have had lots of knowledge of that took place every year, and it was Passover.

The Passover meal looked back to the Jewish people as they were leaving Egypt in captivity, as slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh was not super pumped about them leaving, and so that's an understatement.

We see two things happen: one, we see God send plague after plague after plague. The other thing that we see God do—I mean, you can explain this the way you want—it says God hardened Pharaoh's heart.

Put that in your theological pipe and smoke it! That's a hard thing, man. That's a weird one.

Mark, I got him! Got him!

But I think we kind of go like, "Wait a second, which God did this?" You know?

I think the way that I kind of harmonize that within my theological understanding of God is that Pharaoh was opposed to releasing God's people, and God took that inward condition of Pharaoh and made it worse for His ends.

He gets to the very end of these plagues, and the final plague was taking the life of the firstborn. I don't have a—like, that's a conversation to have with God, right? It's His prerogative. None of us deserve oxygen.

That is the reality. He's trying to deliver His people. If we look at what's taking place in the Middle East right now, it is not new that there is a spiritual reality in our world trying to destroy Israel. That is not a new problem; it's actually been happening since Israel has ever existed.

God, as a part of protecting His people, gave them a practice of putting the blood of a lamb over the tops of their doors, and that meant that the angel of death would not visit their home. It protected their children. I mean, like, this is wild, right?

From that point on, if you don't know the story, obviously now Pharaoh, devastated, lets them go. They leave, and they leave mass—huge change. Israel grew massively, gained tremendous resources and knowledge, and even technology for the day.

They get to the edge of the Red Sea. Pharaoh has changed his mind, and all the armies are going to kill Israel. As they get there and maybe take some of them back, God parts the Red Sea. Lots of conversations about that in the scholarly world.

They cross it, and then they get to the other side. People will say, "That wasn't the Red Sea; it was the Reed Sea," because of how it functions in Hebrew. I say it's a miracle either way because either God drowned a bunch of people with ankle-deep water, or He parted a lot of water.

They get to the other side, and they begin a practice every year called the Passover, which happens during the high holy days for the Jewish people. They would remember God's provision for them.

If you think about this, it would have changed their entire national history. Their entire national identity would have been different. Ultimately, God had in view that He was using Israel to bring about Jesus, the Savior of the world, right?

So that's all sort of in play here. Jesus takes this description that I've probably taken too long to give you, and He says, "I'm going to reinterpret that event," which would have been blasphemous if He wasn't the Savior of the world, just so we're all on the same page.

Because He says to the disciples, as He's passing it out on their Passover night—the night that He knew He would be betrayed—and He says, "This is my body, which is broken for you."

They're like, "Jesus, what are you talking about? That is not what this means." And He's like, "No, no, trust me, trust me, trust me."

Then He passes out the wine and says, "This is my blood, which is poured out for you." They're like, "No, no, no! This is the blood of the spotless lamb that saved us in Egypt! What are you talking about?"

But like so many times that we see in Jewish history, Jesus is the better insert thing. Jesus is the better lamb. If you have read the Bible a bunch, you know Jesus gets compared to the lamb a lot. Where did that come from? Passover! That's where it came from!

What God was doing in this tragic sort of object lesson in Egypt was preparing them and, candidly, showing us God's consistency throughout human history. Just like He delivered His people through the spotless lamb in Egypt, He delivered you and me through the spotless lamb of Jesus.

But the spotless lamb in Egypt delivered them temporarily; the spotless lamb of Jesus delivered us perfectly and permanently with God forever.

He does that for His disciples, but they don't even get it because they all walk away. I would say that the primary audience for that metaphor would be followers of Jesus that would come like us.

Now we remember that Jesus says, "Do this." He models it, and then He says, "Keep doing this." He says, "Do this in remembrance of me," which for us is no big deal. We don't have another thing that we're competing with.

But Jesus is really saying to a group of people who have grown up Jewish, "The experience would be like someone coming to you and saying, 'Hey, Christmas, from now on, make Christmas about me.'"

Jesus is saying, "Hey, from now on, make Passover about me." For Jewish people, this was paradigm-shaking, right?

Every time we practice communion, it's for followers of Jesus to remember that Jesus is the perfect spotless lamb forever that secured us a relationship we could never secure on our own.

We do it together as this sort of shared act. Paul talks a lot about communion in the New Testament, and he says we actually proclaim Christ's death until He comes again.

Every time we share communion, I talk about it sometimes that for non-Christians in the room, it's the time when every follower of Jesus that calls our church home—every time you take communion, you are actually, Paul says, preaching to the unchurched people around you that Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection is relevant to your life.

Wow! So that's what communion is.

I appreciate that answer. I think it's a great reminder of the through story of the Bible—how we can read about something, but it's just rooted in so much else, right? It just makes the entire story come alive or more vibrant, or however you want to say that.

Well, it's messy, right?

Absolutely! Just like we talked about this summer with the rest of the story. If we want—I think I framed it this way this last weekend—with the Bible reliable one. If we want the weak and welcoming God, look, we can reshape the God of the Bible into that if you want. I mean, that God is powerless to help you, but whatever, you know?

But if you want an actual powerful God, at some point, you have to decide. I used a Keller quote where he said, "We look at the Bible and we say, 'What can't I accept?' But we really, as Christians, should look at the Bible and go, 'What can't God accept in me?'"

And that's a—I don't like that question at all, like, a lot!

So, yeah, I think that's true for all of us.

Well, this is the last message in the series. Where do we go from here?

We're just going to start having parties every weekend, I think!

So crushed it! Just keep running it back, you know? Just keep listening!

We have a couple things coming up. One is in just a couple weeks, we have Meno 150, so we will have a new series that starts this upcoming weekend, if you're listening to this on Wednesday, called "In Your Lifetime."

In it, we're going to be in the book of 2 Timothy. We'll be in the first couple chapters over the next few weeks, and it really centers around legacy, which is obviously why we're doing it right now.

We'll get to tell some stories of people at Meno. If you missed it, Mark did an interview with just a tremendous couple in our church, and that's available on the podcast thread.

We'll have some more of those. We'll celebrate in week two, Meno 150, at Woodside High School. You can sign up at men.church/meno150.

We will continue for a couple more weeks after that as sort of our final series before we get into Advent when we begin preparing to celebrate Christmas together.

Hopefully, what it does is it helps you understand we are all living a legacy, whether we think we are or not, and we will all be leaving a legacy, whether we think we are or not. The choice is what kind.

Hopefully, this series will give us a look into this beautiful relationship between Paul and Timothy. If you read a lot of the New Testament, Paul is very didactic—like, very specific. He's passionate about churches, but he's kind of cracking the whip a lot of times.

2 Timothy is the most personal book that Paul has ever written. He's writing it to his protege, Timothy, who is a young pastor. He's the pastor at the church at Ephesus. Many believe that this is among Paul's final writings, and so you just see a much more sort of personal heart from Paul to Timothy.

In turn, I think it's sort of the Spirit's heart for you and me to think about and walk with God.

Amazing! Before we go, I have a series pitch.

I'm ready!

Whoa! It's the rest of the—brought to you by the way!

Yeah, brought to you by the way from the series picture of the rest of the story!

It's the rest of the story meets summer at the movies!

But we take the rest of the movies—Bible stories that were turned into movies!

'Cause the whole time you're talking about the Exodus stuff, I'm—the Prince of Egypt is playing in my mind!

So we go through that movie and we talk about how it works, how it doesn't work.

Summer at the Bible movies!

Yes, there it is! Nice!

There's the Exodus one with Christian Bale who plays Moses, and there's the old Charlton Heston one.

Yeah, yeah!

There's maybe—it's just Moses movies!

Cheryl—no, not Cheryl Crow!

Russell Crowe! Didn't he do a Noah one?

Yeah, he was Noah!

We could also do Bruce Almighty!

That's a good one!

And Evan Almighty!

If you're listening to this and you have some other movies that we should think about, send them in!

We will be close to starting to forecast out series for 2024 and 2025, so yeah, seriously, send in your ideas of—genuinely, what—maybe it's movies, but maybe you're just like, "I'd love to hear you guys cover insert topic."

We're not going to be out of ideas, but we'd love to include yours!

Yeah, well, thanks, Phil!

Of course! We'll be praying for you for this weekend and praying for your week as well as we're heading into Meno 150.

And as you are all listening to this, pray for our leadership team as they are off at a conference in the East Bay.

In the East Bay!

Yeah!

Cool! Thanks, everybody! Have a great week!

See you, everybody!

Bye-bye!

1. "If we can sit in the reality of our identity that we are loved by God no matter what, whether you're a follower of Jesus or not, he loves you, he's crazy about you. Out of that love, acceptance, and relationship, I begin to live out this kind of transformed vision of the different way that Jesus modeled." - 15:55

2. "One of the deepest cultural pressures that we feel is the idol of self-sufficiency. We want to communicate that we are self-sufficient, but in reality, our lives are often inconsistent with that idea. We are so concerned with this external appearance of 'we got it, we're good'." - 17:03

3. "Sometimes we don't do anything because we have mistook our responsibility for God's responsibility. We're giving ourselves too much credit and not enough at the same time. God's got it, and he's just asking you to take a step." - 08:24

4. "The standard by which we understand God through the scriptures is that God is perfect. The problem becomes, if God's holy and to be in a perfect and permanent relationship with God we also need to be holy, then the 'good enough, more good than bad' scale system doesn't work." - 09:28

5. "The lie of self-sufficiency will eventually show itself true. Eventually, you will hit something you can't solve. Without God, we cling to people, but we ask people to be God. Turns out they can't be. Even the best people with the best of intentions can't be God. Together we're trusting someone who is perfect, who can handle all of this, who can take the weight of my disappointment, of my failed expectations." - 18:35