Good morning. That uh worship song and video certainly tells uh the story of Good Friday and uh Easter Sunday better than than I ever could. And it's uh, you know, parts are really tough to watch. It is it's just a it's a heartbreaker, and um, but then joyful at the same time. But one thing it shows is just how determined Jesus was uh to save us and really to answer that question that we all have at one time or another. Does God really love me? Um Jesus certainly tried to answer it uh that day. I do want to welcome everyone. Um happy Easter. If it's uh your first time here, hope you can tell, you can just relax and be yourself. There's no one here pretending to have it all together. You know, we're all looking to Jesus and asking him to teach us and uh and him to change us, and so we can all have the lives that he created us um to have. I have just one quick announcement, and that's next Sunday we'll be back at uh with 110 a.m. get together. We've got a special guest, Susan mentioned it last week, but it's Tommy Newberry. And um, first of all, he's a great guy that we're gonna enjoy being with. And he also has written three New York Times bestselling books. Uh the first one was a book about uh just kind of success and life in general, uh based on on uh godly principles. And uh the last two have been uh centered around Philippians 4.8. The first one was the 4.8 principle, and his latest book is just taken off like crazy, and it's how to live those principles out. And it's called 40 Days to a Joy-Filled Life. And the book's been deeply meaningful to a bunch of us um here because it's not hype. It actually, actually uh changes our lives. And in 40 days, we have so much joy and even just see our own life and and the whole world uh differently. And um we're gonna do 40 days together uh starting uh next week, really starting the Monday after. But Tom, you'll be here next uh week and introduce it. And I just hope we can all come back, because it's gonna be uh a life changer. If you don't have a copy of the book, uh we're gonna have a bunch here at cost uh next week, and so you can pick up uh pick up one. It's uh it's a small book. I mean, this is it. This is really for the guys. It's just a small book. Um it's uh three or four pages a day. The whole thing is it's 40 days, and you read three or four small pages a day. It takes less than five minutes, and uh, but it gets us thinking in this process that that ends up with so much more uh joy in our life. And I do want to say something to the guys, um, because in general we are not as excited usually about a um about a book. And you may or may not know, we have a uh we're a volunteer church, we have two people uh on staff, and we all volunteer, everyone you see uh really this morning, including uh myself, is volunteering. And and mostly what I've done for the past 15 years or or so is is start and and lead companies. And mostly what Tommy Newberry does is work with with different people that are business leaders. And um this book, this 40 days, I cannot think of one thing that you could possibly do that could affect our careers, men or women, affect our careers more, affect our families more, um, for students. It's gonna affect uh how you're doing in school, it's gonna affect how you're doing in sports. It really is just a um um life changer, and it'll certainly affect how much we enjoy our lives. So it's gonna be impactful, it's gonna be fun, and uh if you can uh join us again next Sunday. I mentioned how that last worship song tells the story of Easter, you know, which is really horrifying and beautiful and amazing all at the same time. And Jesus came to earth for so many different reasons to demonstrate that he understands our struggles. He came as a real person. He wasn't like a Christian superhero. You know, he came as a real person living the way we do. And so he gets us and he knows how to help and he wants to help. You know, he came to show us what love, we talk a lot about love, he came to show us what love really looks like. You know, on Good Friday, as I mentioned, uh he especially tried to answer that question: Does God really love me once and for all? But mostly Jesus came to reconnect us in a real relationship with God our Father, our Abba Father, Daddy Father, with the Holy Spirit, and with Jesus Himself. And so on Easter Sunday, we're just so thankful. You know, and we we worship Jesus and we we thank Jesus. And there's a specific way Jesus asked us uh to remember him. And it's it's pretty cool. And so we're gonna talk about that for a little bit this morning. In Luke 22, it says, When it was time, he sat down, all the apostles with him, and said, You've no idea how much I've looked forward to eating this Passover meal with you before I enter my time of suffering. It's the last one I'll eat until we all eat it together in the kingdom of God. Taking the cup, he blessed it, then said, Take this and pass it among you. As for me, I'll not drink wine again until the kingdom of God arrives. Taking bread, he blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, This is my body given for you, eat it in my memory. And so we call it the Lord's Supper. You might think of it as a communion, and it's not only a reminder of Jesus, it is literally a meal with Jesus, where we can take just a few moments out of our hectic lives and weeks and stop and talk with Jesus. You know, thank him, ask him questions wherever we're at. We might have experienced the Lord's Supper as a ritual or a sacrament, and it is actually the most beautiful demonstration of Jesus, what he is really about. And there's such simplicity and there's so much beauty in this mill. Bill Thrasher spoke last Sunday and he he talked about the week leading up to uh the crucifixion and just all the details and how the parallels between the Lamb of the nation of Israel uh coming in and Jesus and how it all paralleled even to the crucifixion and the uh the Passover mill and and and how God works out all the details in our lives too. And I was out of town last week and I was talking with Bill on the phone on Saturday, and we were talking about how his Wednesday night group did the Passover Seder mill together and just how uh what a great experience that was. And and he was telling me about this revelation, epiphany, whatever uh you want to call it, about the Passover meal and the Lord's Supper. And what really struck Bill was the move from the tree of knowledge back to the tree of life. And if you're part of his hands, we've talked about the Garden of Eden, we've talked about uh the tree of life. This might be new for some of us. But the whole thing, even today, Easter Sunday started back in the Garden of Eden. And Adam and Eve had a relationship with God, a friendship with God. They would walk with God and talk with God, and they had meaningful work and they had uh real responsibility. And in the center of this garden, there were two uh prominent trees. You know, the first was the tree of life, and that's where God wanted them to eat freely and to live and enjoy life with God. And so the forbidden fruit we think of uh wasn't some sort of debauchery or some sort of uh sensual desire. The forbidden fruit was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And that is so important because what that tree symbolized was this attitude of just tell me what to do. You know, tell me what to do, tell me what not to do, give me the rules, and I'll take it from there. And so they picked the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And so what we got was the law and much of the Old Testament, and mankind spent thousands of years proving to ourselves that we cannot be who God created us to be by having the rules preached at us and pounded into our heads. Our only hope is to get back to the tree of life, where we're in relationship with God, with his Holy Spirit, in relationship with Jesus, because they're the ones that's ones that have the power to change us. They're the ones that can give us the strength to make tough decisions when we need to make them. And the Passover Seder is a mill looking forward to Jesus. The whole mill speaks to Jesus coming as the Messiah. There's so much symbolism intertwined in the whole mill. And it also kind of epitomizes the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I mean, there's chapters in the Old Testament talking about uh the Passover mill. It took people in Jesus' uh day uh weeks to prepare for it, and then really an entire week to go through all the details. They had to clean out everything in their house. They had to do so many things in minute detail. And then they get to the mill themselves, and it is all laid out step by step by step, and they need to do it perfectly. Now, our meal, the Lord's Supper, is not a meal looking forward to Jesus. It is a meal with Jesus, where we can take a moment, talk to him, ask him anything. And he lays out this, this is part of the contrast. He lays out this new meal with very few details. You know, they were eating unleavened bread because there's the Passover meal, but Jesus doesn't even use the word for unleavened bread. He uses the common word uh just for bread. The barest of instructions. It's because Jesus is taking us back to the Garden of Eden where we all get to decide: do we want the rules and doctrine and dogma or do we want a relationship with the one who created us and loves us? And what is more natural in a relationship than sharing a meal together? And so when Jesus says, do this to remember me, we get to choose. We get to choose the when, the how, some of the what. Because this meal, this new mill, is about the who. It's about the who. It's about Jesus, and it's about us, and it's about a relationship. You know, and what comes easier? A meal with a friend, a meal with someone we love, a meal with someone we need to ask some advice from. And it's no wonder that Jesus chose a meal. You know, he ate with people all the time. In fact, he ate with people so much that he himself says the Pharisees called him a glutton and a drunkard. And I bet he laughed at that because, you know, he wasn't, but he did. He did eat with a lot of people and he ate with them a lot of the time. And it's just like Jesus that he chose the one thing that ticked off all the religious scholars and teachers constantly. They were constantly on Jesus' back because of mills. They didn't like how Jesus ate. Uh one day the Jesus and his disciples are walking through a field, the disciples pick some grain and uh and eat it, and the Pharisees freak out because it's the Sabbath day, and they thought that was work on the Sabbath, and so Jesus had to had to explain it all to him. And uh, kids, don't listen to this, but one thing Jesus didn't do was uh wash his hands before he ate. And that was a real problem for the religious scholars and Pharisees. I'm sure his hands were clean, but they had this big ceremonial hand washing that they would do before every meal. And Jesus was trying to make a point that he came not to clean up the outside of people, he came to clean up the inside of people, to change us from the inside out. And so he refused to do this ceremonial hand washing, and it just infuriated the Pharisees. But more than anything, they really, really didn't like who Jesus ate with. And so they were constantly ticked off because he was always eating with different uh types of people. Like the day he met Matthew, and we call Matthew Saint Matthew, but he was no saint the day Jesus met him. I mean, he was a tax collector, which means he was a traitor. He was now working for the, he was a Jewish man, now working for the Roman government. He was an extortionist, he was a user of people. And we read in Matthew 9, it says, as Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his tax collector's booth. Follow me and be my disciple, Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed him. Later, Matthew invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with the many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. But when the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with such scum? When Jesus heard this, he said, Healthy people don't need a doctor, sick people do. And then he added, Now go and learn the meaning of this scripture. I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices. For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners. And there was another time Jesus is eating in a Pharisee's house, and uh, and a woman with a not so good reputation comes and washes Jesus' feet. It says in Luke 7, when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She's a sinner. And Jesus said to the woman, Your sins are forgiven. Everywhere that Jesus went, people told other people to stay away from him. Either you're not good enough, you don't qualify, don't bother Jesus. There was a blind man, and Jesus was walking down the street, and there's a big crowd, and the blind man's shouting to Jesus, and the crowd tells him to be quiet. And the blind man only shouts louder. And Jesus hears him and he goes over and he heals him. There's a time when parents are bringing their children to Jesus so he could pray for them, and his own disciples say, Oh no, no, don't bother Jesus. And Jesus says, Don't stop the children from coming. You know, and he stopped whatever he was doing and took the time to bless each and every child. See, the Pharisees and the religious people had it all wrong, completely wrong. Jesus said, Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Sometimes religion and legalism say, you know, you need to be part of this denomination. You need to meet this criteria, criteria, before you can have a meal with Jesus. And sometimes that's that's well intended. There's a verse in 1 Corinthians 11 that says that uh if you eat the the bread and the juice unworthily, that you're eating condemnation. And so people take that really seriously, but it's but they miss often what exactly Paul is talking about, and they miss the very heart of Jesus. Because the discussion really starts this way. This is 1 Corinthians 11. When you meet together, you're not really interested in the Lord's Supper. For some of you hurry to eat your own meal without sharing with others. As a result, some go hungry while others get drunk. What? Don't you have your own house homes for eating and drinking? Or do you really want to disgrace God's church and shame the poor? What am I supposed to say? Do you want me to praise you? Well, I certainly will not praise you for this. So this unworthy manner that Paul is talking about is not that they had sin in their lives. I mean, if that was it, none of us could ever take the Lord's Supper, right? The unworthy manner is that they were excluding people. That they were unloving, that they were indifferent. And so, how could we ever use that conversation to exclude people from a meal with Jesus? And of course, how we live matters. You know, God's got a plan and a purpose, and he's got a life that he created us to live. But we don't get it together and come to Jesus. We talk to him wherever we're at and begin the process of him changing us from the inside out. Remember Zacchaeus? He's pretty uh well known. If Matthew was not a saint, uh Zacchaeus, I mean, he was the most notorious uh scoundrel in the whole region because he was the head of all the tax collectors. And one time Jesus is walking down the street, and Zacchaeus is in a tree, and the very first thing Jesus says to this horrible scoundrel is, Come down here. Tonight I am having dinner with you. Don't ever let anyone anywhere at any time tell you you are not good enough for a meal with Jesus. He knows you, he loves you, he has not given up on us. He wants a relationship with us. All of us. And so in a few minutes, I'm gonna invite everyone, and no pressure, of course, but everyone is so welcome to go to the sides and grab a piece of bread and some juice, and we'll have this meal together with Jesus. And what we'll do is I'll lead us in a short prayer, and uh and then we'll take a little bit of time, like a like a minute and a half, um, and give us a chance to really talk to Jesus. And and think, if you will, of going to a restaurant and sliding into a booth across from Jesus. I mean, what would you want to talk about? I mean, you might have questions. Jesus is glad to answer questions. He he answered questions all the time. You know, the the the big question, are you really the one? Are you actually the son of God? That's a great question we can ask Jesus. And questions can be the start of a great relationship, and we just have to listen for for the answer. You know, he was asked, how could someone be saved? He was asked, what's the most important things for us to do? He was asked, will you help me? He was asked, will you heal me? Sometimes it wasn't even a conversation, sometimes it was someone just wanting to tell him, Thank you. It's so easy to connect with Jesus and or even reconnect with Jesus. You know, we just simply, in our own words, in our own way, say, Jesus, I want you in my life. Jesus, I need you, I want to follow you, teach me, or it might be I'm desperate, Jesus. Um please save me. And it's an amazing thing because regardless of how we perceive ourselves, we are all created in God's image. We're created in God's image. And we have a spirit just like God has a spirit. And when we put our trust in Jesus, that spirit comes alive, it connects with God's spirit, and then he starts transforming us. He starts changing us, but he does it from the inside out, and then eventually our whole lives start to change around us. You know, whatever the conversation would be, uh it's Easter Sunday. You know, in my opinion, it's the greatest day of the year. It's the day that Jesus shocked, you know, the whole world. It's the day the power of God's Spirit raised our Savior from the dead. It's the day that Jesus whipped death, and so none of us ever need to be afraid of dying at all. And it's the day that Jesus made it possible that we can, with simple faith, be back at the tree of life in a real relationship with God. And so what a perfect day to have a meal with Jesus. And so if you want to now, we've got bread and juice over on the sides, and there's a lot of us, but but uh we've got time. And just grab a a cup of juice and a piece of bread, and then we'll come back and we'll we'll have this meal together. We'll just take uh just a few more, like a minute, so everybody can um get back uh seated. But uh that was cool. You know what I liked about that is uh is all the talking and the and the laughter and and especially from here you could just hear the life and uh the joy. So when Jesus uh gave us this meal with him, he he broke the bread and he said that this bread represents his body. And you know, part of that is is what we saw on the suffering on the Christ, on the cross, and how he endured that. Um but a big part of it is that he it's to remember that Jesus came as a person, that he had a body just like ours, you know, and um and he lived a life, and he knows what we go through, and he knows pain, and he knows sorrow, and he knows suffering. And and we can talk to him and know that uh that he gets it. And so we're gonna lift up the bread. And Jesus, we just praise you, and we thank you for the tremendous sacrifice just to come to earth in a physical body and live as a as a real person. And we do thank you for that tremendous sacrifice and suffering that you went through for us. And we love you. So we eat the bread. I didn't read that whole verse where it talks about this is where I can have a drink of water, or I'm not gonna be able to talk. But the whole verse talks about, it goes on a little bit further, and it describes the wine as uh as Jesus' blood. And and Jesus' point is not the idea of drinking blood, it's a symbolic remembrance of what his blood did for us, you know, and how it removed any sin we've ever had, any sin we actually will ever have. And so with that, all the shame should be gone, all the guilt should be gone. And so we can come to Jesus just pure with boldness, with friendship, and talk with him. And so, Jesus, we just thank you and we praise you, and we thank you for your sacrifice and the blood that you shed, and we thank you for removing all of our sins. And we ask you to help us not to feel that guilt and not to feel that shame, but realize that we can come boldly and confidently to talk with you. So we'll drink the juice. So, what we're gonna do now is slide into that booth across from Jesus. And we'll just take a little bit and just give us some space and a little bit of time, and so we can have that meal and talk with Jesus about whatever we would have. But we can carry on that conversation uh for a while. But if y'all will stand, we're gonna we've got two wonderful worship songs, so we can finish by worshiping um together. It's just amazing, wonderful, wonderful that we could have a God and a savior like Jesus. Let's pray. Father, we praise you, God. We praise you for sending your son. We praise you for raising your son so we too can live a resurrected life, the life that you've always intended for us. And Jesus, we thank you so much. We thank you for wanting a relationship with us, for being so accessible to us, for helping us, for changing us. And Father, there's so many of us here this morning, and we all are in different spots, and we have different needs today. And God, I just ask you to bless every single one of us with exactly what it is that we need from you. And we praise you and we thank you in Jesus' holy name. Amen. Well, love y'all. Hope you have a great Easter.