The Last Word

Transcript

I throw them in the grinder and I grind them on the setting specific to the region. Then I use what’s called a gooseneck kettle to—this sounds ridiculous. It didn’t sound this way when I wrote it. I use my gooseneck kettle dialed to 201 degrees. And before I start the brew process, I use my kettle to coat the paper filter with hot water to wash away the paper taste. Okay. After I discard the paper, water, I add grounds to the filter. And then I begin to pour in slow circles, just enough to wet the grounds. And then that’s when the grounds begin to rise. And that’s right about the time when the kitchen begins to fill with the smell of coffee. I pour, I wait, I pour again, I wait, and then I pour one last time. Four minutes for one cup. The pour over made the same way in the same order with the same care hundreds of times. Unless you think that my coffee rhythm is a bit extreme, I would encourage you to sit down with Sam Nagel or Andre Gorbin and ask them about their process. But here’s the thing about my coffee liturgy. No one has ever told me that my routine could appear as rote. Not once have I needed to switch up my routine because of boredom. Not once have I felt legalistic about my coffee liturgy. I love this liturgy, not just because of what ends up in my cup. Somewhere along the way, after hundreds of mornings, the routine itself has become something that I love. What I’m saying is that the repetition didn’t kill my love for coffee. The repetition is what helped shape my love for coffee. Now, I know everybody in this room, you know, doesn’t have this kind of detail when it comes to their coffee. Your coffee rhythm isn’t as aggressive as your staff pastor’s. Maybe your liturgy is a Keurig. You push in the pod, you press the button, and your coffee’s done in 30 seconds. And listen, there’s no shade if you use a Keurig. That’s your ritual, and you love it. And I can only imagine how frustrated you would be if you started that whole process only to find out you don’t have any more pods. You see, the point isn’t the method. The point is that you have a method. Family, we all have liturgies in our lives. We just don’t call them that. You have the gym routine, the Sunday run, the bike ride at 5.30 in the morning, Ben. You have the popcorn before the movie, the quiet time to study the day before the kids wake up and things get super crazy. Your week is full of little rituals you repeat without complain and defend without apology. So the question isn’t whether you have a liturgy, you do. The question is how is that liturgy shaping you? For weeks now, we’ve been walking through the liturgy of Trinity Church, the very instrument we use to shape our hearts for worship. And we’ve been unpacking one element at a time. Every Sunday, asking one question of each element, what is God doing here? Because if we know what God is doing, it will better help us to be shaped by it. We’ve seen it with the call to worship in Psalm 95, that God speaks first. We’ve seen it with the public reading of Scripture in 1 Timothy 4, where God commands us to devote ourselves to it. We looked at baptism in Acts 2, where God makes the gospel visible through the waters. And congregational singing in Colossians 3, where God tells us to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly as we sing to one another. We’ve seen it at the table in 1 Corinthians 11, where God moves us to proclaim His death until He comes again. We’ve seen it in the preached word in 2 Timothy 4, where God charges the preacher before His own face. In the heard word in Luke 24, where God sets hearts burning as the Scriptures are opened. Seven weeks, seven elements. And did you notice, family, every single one of those elements had a text underneath it? Not a preference, not a tradition we inherited but never questioned, but a specific biblical text. Which means every part of our worship service is Scripture-saturated by design so that we might be shaped by Scripture. And this morning, we come to the last element, the benediction, or the last word. Now, for some of you, you have heard that word benediction so many times, but you don’t really know what that word means. So just let me explain what the word benediction means briefly. It’s really just an old word for blessing. And it comes from two Latin words, beni, meaning good, and diction, meaning word. So the benediction is the good word, the blessing God speaks over His people before He sends them out. But here’s my question for you as we begin. What do you do during the benediction? What does the moment after we sing the doxology look like for you? Because from my vantage point up here, I can see a lot. I can tell you what a lot of us do. You treat it like the credits at the end of a movie. You reach for your things. You look for your keys or your kids, depending on your season of life. And instead of letting God have the last word, you spend the last 30 seconds of worship packing up to leave. Now, you might not be doing that physically, but can I ask you, are you doing that mentally? Family, I want to suggest to you this morning that those 30 seconds are exceedingly important because letting the Lord have the last word shapes your whole week. You see, most of us in this room would never deny the authority of Scripture. That’s not really an issue for us. I think for us the issue is one of location. We let God have the last word in this room, and then most of us take it back the moment we reach the parking lot. Scripture is authoritative on Sunday, but can function as simply good advice on Tuesday if we’re not careful. In other words, we tend to keep our liturgies bifurcated. God gets this liturgy in this room for this hour and a half, and then convenience, the culture, our career gets the other liturgies the leftover 167 hours, or 66 and a half, or whatever. So the benediction and this particular text this morning comes to break down that bifurcation. Let me just explain how that fleshes out practically. This morning, you’ll sing that Jesus is Lord, and you will mean it with all of your heart, hopefully. You’ll hear the word preached, and you’ll nod in agreement with some of it, hopefully. And then tomorrow morning, there will be a meeting or a decision you’ll need to make about your money, or a conversation that you’ve been avoiding. And in those rooms, if we’re honest, a different set of authorities will quietly take over. The authority of efficiency, the authority of what is expected, the authority of what else, what everyone else is doing. And what happens is that we subtly disengage from the authority of Scripture. Not because we’ve renounced the Bible. We would never do that. It’s just that we tend to leave the Bible and its authority in that room where it makes the most sense, which is here. In many ways, in those other rooms, we have unintentionally separated the sacred and the secular. We have given God the sanctuary and then given the rest to what’s convenient or culturally acceptable from the world. But brothers and sisters, this text won’t let us do that. And here is the claim of this entire sermon this morning. God gets the last word in this room so that He can have the last word in every room you walk into this week. Let me just say that again. God gets the last word in this room so that He can have the last word in every room you walk into this week. If you’re the note-taking type, I’ve got three points for you this morning, and they’re very simple. The last word over your body, the last word over your mind, and the last word over your week. So let’s begin with point one, the last word over your body. Let’s look briefly at the very first word of that first verse. Paul begins this entire section here with one little word, therefore. Now some of you have heard me say this before, but whenever a verse begins with the word therefore, you have to ask one question. You know what that question is? What is the therefore therefore, okay? The only way to answer that question is to look back at what came before it. And before this therefore, Paul had just penned 11 chapters. And throughout those 11 chapters, he has been unfolding the mercy of God. Chapter after chapter, Paul has explained what God has done for sinners. And when he reaches the end of chapter 11, he is so overwhelmed with the goodness of God and the mercy of God that he can no longer contain it. And so what he does is he breaks out in this spontaneous praise. Look at the end of chapter 11 briefly. Paul enthusiastically says, for from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. That amen is the last word of chapter 11 and then the very next word that is spilled out of Paul’s pen is therefore. You see what that means? It means Paul transitions us into a posture of response to God’s mercy that he’s been unpacking. And it means that Paul praises before he pleads. In other words, everything Paul is about to ask of your body and your mind and your weak stands on everything God has already done. And notice how he pleads. He says, I appeal to you. It’s a plead in the form of an appeal. Now remember, Paul was an apostle. He could have commanded this, but he didn’t do that. Instead he appeals. He comes alongside. He’s allowing the mercy of God to do the asking. And notice Paul’s appeal to mercy is plural. By the mercies of God. So Paul isn’t simply pointing back to one act of kindness. He’s pointing back to everything he spent 11 chapters unfolding. And in case you’re unfamiliar with what Paul has said throughout those 11 chapters, let me just give you a few of those mercies that he’s referring to. Romans 8 29, you were chosen before the foundation of the world. Romans 8 30, you were called out of darkness. Romans 5 1, you were justified, declared righteous in God’s sight. That’s what we unpacked in a kid’s catechism today. Romans 8 15, you were adopted as sons and daughters. Romans 8 38, you are kept by the Lord. Romans 5 8, you are loved by the Lord. Romans 8 18, you have been promised glory. Every single one of those family is a mercy. Not one of them was owed to you. This is the heart of mercy. God withholding the judgment we deserve because of our sin and giving us kindness we don’t deserve. But while it is true that we did nothing to deserve mercy, the mercies of God demand something from you. And what kind of response does mercy demand of you? Well look at the text. To present your bodies. Notice Paul doesn’t say heart. He could have said hearts. And we probably would have preferred hearts. Because a heart can be given privately, invisibly, or sentimentally. You can give God your heart and never have to really adjust anything. But you can’t do that with your body. Think about this. Your body is where you actually live. It’s the part of you that shows up places. It’s public. It’s visible. It keeps a schedule. It’s trackable. It’s somewhere specific right now at all times. And whatever your body is doing there can be seen because it’s what you’re doing there. To present your heart sounds spiritual. But to present your body is basic. And family that’s the point. Presenting your body looks very basic. Like your hands doing honest work when no one is watching. It looks like your mouth staying shut when gossip starts. It looks like your mouth opening up when something true needs to be said. It looks like your eyes and what you let them rest on at 11 o’clock at night. It looks like your knees on the floor with a toddler. Or your back cleaning the sanctuary and setting up chairs that no one is going to thank you for. And it looks like your calendar, which is just your body’s itinerary. The thing is, you can say anything with your heart, but your body tells the truth about what you love. And Paul says, present your body as the proof of your love and do that as a living sacrifice. Now that phrase, living sacrifice, it’s a very interesting phrase. We’ve heard it so many times that we don’t even think about it anymore. But if you really, really think about that phrase, it’s actually a contradiction of terms. Think about every sacrifice in the Old Testament. Every single one of them was a dead sacrifice. I mean, that’s the whole point. Sacrifice is dead by definition. An animal didn’t stay on the altar because it agreed to. It stayed on the altar because it was dead. Dead things don’t, you know, dead things don’t leave altars. So to be a living sacrifice is a contradiction, and Paul knows it. It’s a sacrifice that could crawl off the altar if it wanted to. And family, I could be wrong, but I think Paul uses this contradiction to remind you of something, that there’s really only ever been one living sacrifice that could have gotten off the altar but stayed. Do you remember in the gospel accounts what the crowds shouted to Jesus while He was on the cross? What did they say? Come down, save yourself. You saved others, can’t you save yourself? Here’s the thing, He could have done that. He could have come off the cross, but He didn’t. Every other sacrifice in history stayed because it was bound. Jesus stayed because of love. So when Paul asks for your body on the altar, he isn’t asking you to repeat the sacrifice Christ has made. That sacrifice is finished. It can’t be added to, and it doesn’t need any help. He’s simply asking you to respond to it. When Paul says, I appeal to you by the mercies of God, this is the main mercy he’s talking about, the sacrifice that stayed on the altar in love. What this means is that you don’t present your body as a living sacrifice to earn His love or approval. You live as a sacrifice because you already have His love and approval. Some of you grew up in churches where you got this order backwards, and so you were taught that you must perform first, and then God will accept you, or you need to clean yourself up, and then God will love you. But family, hear the order of this text. It’s 11 chapters of what God has done for sinners like you and me, and then a request to respond. You were never meant to climb onto an altar to be loved. You’re loved. That’s why the altar is safe for you. And then Paul flips the entire paradigm, and he calls this living sacrifice, this contradiction of terms, worship. In other words, the ordinary things you do with your body in your everyday life is in every way an act of worship. In the original language, this word for worship is not like the generic word for religious practices. Paul intentionally uses a word that is connected to the temple. It’s a word that describes what the priests did inside. the sanctuary. So it carries the image and weight of the Old Testament. Incense, the altar, and most specifically that most holy place. Well, Paul picks up that Old Testament sanctuary word, that sacred place word, and he lays it on your body that’s walking around in your everyday life. This is Paul pulling together the sacred and the secular, the thing we unknowingly try to pull apart all the time. That the church is for holy things and the world is for worldly things. You see what Paul is doing here. He’s not saying Sunday is your worship day and that your life outside of Sunday should have some acts of worship in them. He’s saying your daily life is the worship. Your body moving through your ordinary week is where worship happens, which means worship isn’t confined to one room and one hour on one day anymore. It’s the offering of your daily existence, even in the places that feels the least sacred, like the cubicle at work or the kitchen or the classroom or the car. You remember what happened the moment Jesus died, just across town from where the cross was in the temple? The very image Paul had in mind when he used this word for worship. Well, inside that temple was a massive curtain, a kind of wall of fabric that hung as tall as this room, woven thick for one purpose, to keep regular people out. Behind it was the most holy place, the room where God’s presence dwelled, and only one man, the high priest, could go behind that curtain only one day a year and not without blood. For centuries, that curtain preached one sermon, you can’t come in here, it’s a sacred space. Matthew tells us that the moment Jesus breathed his last, that curtain was torn from top to bottom, meaning only God could do that. In that moment, God ripped open the room where worship lived, and the book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus opened a new and living way for us through that curtain, and what that means now is that every believer is a priest. You have access in a way that the high priest himself only dreamed of, which means when you walk out these doors, you don’t leave this sanctuary or this sacred place behind, you take it with you into your life, and that should impact every part of your ordinary life, which means some of you need to hear this about your job. Maybe you pour concrete, or you fix cars, maybe you chart patients, or answer support tickets, or maybe you wipe noses for your job, and somewhere along the way you’ve concluded that God’s real work happens inside here, and what you do out there, that’s just your job, that’s just you paying the bills, that’s you just keeping the house in order. Family, the curtain is torn. Your job site is not a distraction from your worship, it’s the venue for it. The nurse station is an altar. The classroom is an altar. The kitchen is an altar. Monday morning, you clock in as a priest to do holy things. One famous old preacher said this, let the eye look on no evil thing, and it has become a sacrifice. Let the tongue speak nothing filthy, and it has become an offering. Let the hand do no lawless deed, and it has become a whole burnt offering. Your eyes, your tongue, your hands, your commute, your inbox, the kitchen with the dishes at 11 o’clock, that sanctuary word and that sacred space gets laid on every part of your life, and Paul doesn’t call that workplace worship, he calls it spiritual worship, meaning everything you do with a posture of worship is spiritual. Now, some of your Bibles will have this little footnote next to that phrase spiritual worship. That footnote might say rational service. Well, both of those catch a piece of that same Greek word, both land in the same place. It’s a spiritual act of worship, that’s true, but after 11 chapters of mercy, it’s also the only reasonable response left. The world calls that kind of living fanaticism or foolish or irrational, Paul calls it reasonable spiritual worship. In church, that’s what this last nine weeks have been building towards, because if this room is the only place where worship happens, then Sunday is nothing more than a performance and Monday is simply a break from it. But if Paul is right, then this service is the rehearsal and your week is the performance. And what we do here is not the whole of your worship, it’s the shaping of it, and our liturgy is creating in you a kind of muscle memory for the worship that will happen outside there. Paul uses the words here holy and acceptable to God when considering your life of worship, and if you’re one of those underlining or highlighting types of people, highlight that word acceptable. That word acceptable implies something. If our spiritual worship must be acceptable, then there must be spiritual worship that is unacceptable. That means there’s a wrong way to do worship. Not everything that calls itself worship pleases God, which is exactly why we don’t set the terms for worship. This is why we’re so careful about what happens in this room. Seven weeks ago, one of our pastors unpacked Deuteronomy 12 and he said, we don’t add to what God commands for worship and we don’t take away from it. Some of you heard that and wondered, was that too narrow of a view for our worship service? But do you see it now? God takes worship very seriously, and there is an acceptable way for worship. But family, I don’t want you to only hear the warning in that word acceptable. I also want you to hear the wonder of that word acceptable. The God who spoke galaxies into existence, the God who needs nothing from us, says that when you offer him your ordinary body, your Tuesday, your parenting, your kitchen, it pleases him. It’s acceptable to him. He doesn’t just tolerate it, he delights in it. And how in the world is that possible? How can people like you and me bring pleasure to a holy God? But because Jesus, the perfect sacrifice, stayed on the altar to make you acceptable. He was pleasing to God so that in him you could be pleasing to God. So, what does God want with your body? Everything. He wants everything presented, living, holy, and pleasing. Not presented to become acceptable, but presented because of mercy, because Christ has made you acceptable. Now, to be a living sacrifice I think raises an obvious question. How do you do it? How do you live as a sacrifice? Especially when everything in this world is trying to make you live for yourself? Well, Paul has an answer, and despite what most people think, it isn’t simply spiritual willpower. And this brings us to the second point, the last word over your mind. Look at verse 2. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Here we see two commands, but I want you to notice the grammar. Both verbs are passive. Look at it. Do not be conformed and be transformed. In neither one of those are you the agent. Paul doesn’t say, conform yourself, and he doesn’t say, transform yourself, which means something is being done to you one way or the other. The question is, by whom? So first Paul gives the warning, do not be conformed to this world. This world is probably better translated, this age. Paul uses this age because he sees history in two ages. This age, the old one, sin dominated, death producing, and already passing. And the age to come, which broke in when Jesus walked out of the tomb, and we happen to live in the space in between. And the challenging part of living in the space between in this age is that whether you know it or not, this age has a way of shaping you. It’s pressing in on you even if you don’t invite it to. So notice what this means about your default setting. Conforming is what happens to you if you do nothing. You don’t have to choose to be conformed, you just have to stop resisting. Sit still long enough, scroll long enough, and the shaping happens on its own. About seven years back I had a very unhealthy relationship with Twitter, and I didn’t know it at first. But for a while I started to notice something about myself as it pertained to my Twitter intake. I was becoming more angrier than I have ever been. I was more afraid than I ever have been. I was more discouraged with the world around me and more suspicious of the people in it. And here’s the thing, nothing in my life had actually changed. My family was the same, my church was the same, I still had the same core group of friends and accountability. The only thing that changed was what I was taking in. A thousand outrages a day from every corner of the planet delivered straight to my hands that moved straight to my heart. And I finally had to be honest with myself. I wasn’t made for that. None of us were. God did not build me to carry the anger of the whole world in my pocket. I wasn’t designed to take in that much information that fast with that little time to weigh any of it. And every single bit of it was shaping me. Not because I decided to be shaped, but because I stopped resisting. I just kept scrolling. So I decided to break up with Twitter for a while. I deleted the app from my phone and slowly the fog began to lift. I wasn’t that angry anymore. I wasn’t scared. I began to realize the app hadn’t just been costing me time, it had been forming me in real time. That’s how it works, family. And it’s not just with apps, it’s everything. That’s how our age works. It doesn’t ask you permission to disciple you. Nobody handed you a catechism that said you are what you produce or you deserve what whatever you desire. Your life is your own or YOLO. It came through a thousand ads and a hundred thousand scrolls. The age doesn’t send missionaries, it sends atmosphere. And without resistance we breathe it in. And here’s what I need you to see. The shaping isn’t superficial. The age is after your thoughts. Conformity to this age has a way of shaping you long before it changes your behavior. It reaches into how you evaluate everything. I mean, think about how you size people up when you first meet them. What’s the very first thing you ask them? What do you do? Without thinking, you rank them. Job title, zip code, follower account, whatever it is you use. Nobody taught you a class on that. You absorbed a scale of human worth and you weigh people on it before you even know you’re doing it. Or think about rest. Why is it that when you finally sit down from your busy life you feel guilty? Why does a full calendar feel like righteousness and a Saturday with no plans feel like you’re falling behind? Because somewhere along the way you absorb the idea from the atmosphere that busy is the same thing as valuable. Or think about the culture’s highest compliment, be true to yourself. Which sounds so kind on the surface but underneath it is a whole doctrine. That the truest thing about you is what you want and that anything or anyone that tells you no, including God, is standing in your way. You didn’t argue your way into any of those things, you breathe them in. That’s how conformity works. It’s not a decision problem, it’s an atmosphere problem. So I wonder, can I give you a practical assignment this week? Take an honest look at your inputs. Not to shame you, but to wake you up a little bit. What do you reach for the first thing in the morning? What plays in your ears on the commute to work? What does your feed preach to you a hundred times a day? Because here’s the thing, they’re shaping you by their liturgies. And then after that inventory, maybe ask this question, which one of those things do I maybe need to break up with for a little while? Now, truth be told, an input audit will only take you so far, which is why Paul’s answer is not simply behavior modification. Look at what he says next, be transformed by the renewal of the mind. That word here for mind isn’t raw intelligence. It’s not simply more information or more pings on chat GPT. It’s moral insight. It’s moral eyesight. The way you perceive a situation and judge what matters in it. What does Paul say is being renewed? Your mind. Which means your mind is changing in in a present tense way, and it’s a process. It’s a lifelong reshaping your way of thinking so that you come to resemble more and more the way God thinks. It’s important to understand who is doing the renewing. This word for renewal appears only one other time in the New Testament, and that’s Titus 3 5, where it speaks of the renewal of the Holy Spirit. Both of these verses give credit to the Holy Spirit doing the renewal. So this isn’t try harder or think smarter. You can’t just kind of grit your teeth into a renewed way of thinking. Notice Paul didn’t say renew your mind. He said be transformed by the renewal of your mind. So this isn’t mind over matter. This is spirit over the mind. This is the Spirit of God rewiring how a redeemed person sees this age, and it’s the Spirit renewing you towards that. Romans 8 says God predestined you to be conformed to the image of his Son. So the age or this world is shaping you toward its image, but God has already determined your final shape, and it looks like Jesus. From one degree of glory to another is what 2nd Corinthians says. So brothers and sisters, don’t feel despair at how slow this process can sometimes feel. This renewal is being built to last forever. Now listen, the age presses from the outside through its atmosphere, but God renews from the inside through the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. And what is the purpose for having a renewed mind? We’ll look at the second part of this verse. That by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. That word discern here means to test something and approve it. It’s like what you would do with metals to identify if they’re pure. I mean just think about your actual week. Most of your life has had no proof text hanging over it. There’s no verse about whether you should take that promotion. There’s no verse about how to answer your brother-in-law at dinner. So what does God give you for those rooms? He doesn’t give us a verse for every situation, but he does give us a renewed mind for every situation. So let’s just say you’re offered that promotion. The renewed mind runs a different test than the un-renewed mind. The un-renewed mind runs the world’s test. Does this advance my career? Does it pay me more money? But a renewed mind, it tests the same offer but it says and it asks, will this quietly take away your evenings or your Sundays or your margin with your family? Whose glory does this serve? Can I carry this and still be a living sacrifice? You see, it’s the same facts, it’s just different scales. That’s discernment. And listen, sometimes the renewed mind assesses the situation and takes the promotion because he sees that as stewardship. Sometimes the renewed mind refuses it because he sees that as worship. The point isn’t the answer, the point is whose test gets run in the room. The renewed mind is for the rooms without verses. So then how exactly does this renewing work and where does the Spirit do it? Well family, you’ve been watching this answer for nine weeks. How does the mind get renewed? You come in here and God speaks first. You hear his word read out loud and you take it in. You sing his word loudly with everyone else until it gets stuck in your head. You pray his word. You build a rhythm that responds to it. You sit under the preached word and you respond to it. You watch his word made visible in the water and you see it at the table week after week. And it doesn’t happen all at once. There’s no instant download for a renewed mind. It happens slowly, the way all deep things happen. Family, this is what we’ve been trying to say throughout this whole series. This service isn’t something you just attend. It’s something God uses to shape you. Every element we’ve studied is a tool in the Spirit’s hand shaping the way you think until his thoughts start to feel like home and the world’s thoughts sound crazy. This is what it means for God to have the last word in every area of your life. You carry a mind so saturated and so shaped by his word that when the situation no one wrote a verse about arrives, you can test it and you can discern his will and find that his will is good and acceptable and perfect. The Spirit takes the words we soak in here and then he burns them into our mind so that your mind can know how to apply them at every situation. This brings us to point three, the last word over your week. If you would, please turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 24. Paul isn’t the only one who ties worship to the temple, to the priests’ sacrifice and blessings. Luke does the same thing. He does it in the very last scene of his gospel. As you’re turning there, remember last week Paul Hoffman preached about the two men on the road to Emmaus when God opened up the word to them and their hearts burned. I want to pick up where we left off with Paul Hoffman’s sermon. This text tells us that that same evening the risen Jesus was standing among his disciples and he was doing for them what he did to those two men on the road. Look at verse 45. He says, then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. That word mind here is the same word Paul used in Romans 12 to which means the mind Christ opened is the same mind the Spirit is renewing. So God opens the mind and then the Spirit begins to renew the mind. Now look at verse 50, and he led them out as far as Bethany and lifting up his hands he blessed them. This is exactly what the Old Testament priest would do. In Leviticus 9, Aaron, the priest at the time, he finishes the sacrifices, then he lifts his hands towards the people and he blesses them. So first there is the offering or the sacrifice, then the hands are raised, then he blesses. And the reason for that order is that there is no blessing without blood. A holy God can’t simply bless sinners. There had to be atonement for sin. It’s what we call propitiation, a big word that simply means God’s wrath must be satisfied. Here at Bethany, in this story in Luke, there was no bull, there was no goat to be offered, so how does Jesus bless sinners? Well, Jesus can raise his hands and bless because he was the offering, the once and for all sacrifice. And with the offering finished, Jesus, the true high priest, raises his hands and he blesses his people. Look at verse 51, while he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. So Jesus was mid-blessing when heaven received him. That means the last thing those disciples ever saw of Jesus on this earth was his hands raised over them. And the last word they heard from him was a benediction. Hebrews 7 25 tells us that that benediction is still happening. He always lives to make intercession for them. Right now, Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father. His hands are raised still and his word still is spoken over you. So when you fail on Wednesday, his hands are still raised. And when you’re too tired to pray on Friday and you don’t know what to pray for, he is still praying over you. This is what the blessing is. This is what the benediction is. So many people confuse blessing with fortune. Fortune is when things go your way. The clean bill of health, the pay raise, the parking spot right in front. And listen, those are good gifts. We should thank God for every single one of those. But if blessing means fortune, then the disciples walking back to Jerusalem weren’t blessed. Because persecution was coming for every single one of them. Blessing is not fortune. Blessing is God speaking good over you. And when God speaks, his speaking makes it so. The same voice that said, let there be light, says, the Lord bless you and keep you. It’s God’s face turning toward you and speaking the good word. And that word doesn’t rise or fall with your week. So maybe you don’t view blessing as fortune, but some of you have tied blessing to your consistency. But family, look at the disciples in Bethany again. The hands stayed up while the disciples slept and doubted and failed. They’re not raised because you’ve been consistent. They’re raised because Jesus is consistent. And what did the good word do to those disciples? Look at verse 52. They worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple blessing God. God blesses them and then they bless God. His word over them first and then their lives back to him second. Blessed and then sent. Family, this story in Luke is Romans 12 in short form. That’s what a week looks like when the benediction actually lands. It’s not a week of try harder, it’s a week of blessing back the God who blessed you first. Now maybe you’re here this morning and you’ve never once stood under his blessing. His blessing cost you nothing because it cost him everything. Jesus’ death on the cross paid for your sin that separated you from God and his resurrection proved that the payment was acceptable. Listen, he cannot bless sinners unless the sin is atoned for. And the way your sin is atoned for is by trusting that Jesus’ sacrifice was sufficient for the forgiveness of your sins. And you can trust him this morning. You can take in Jesus this morning as your Savior. Talk to any member in this church after the service and they would love to talk to you about Jesus and what he’s done for sinners. Family, this is the whole sermon in one breath. God blesses his people and then God sends his people. That’s what happened at Bethany and that’s what is about to happen here. In a few moments we’ll come to the table and we’ll proclaim his death. We’ll sing the doxology together and then you’ll stand and you’ll hear the last word. And the last word won’t be mine, it won’t be Andre’s, it will be the Lord’s. A blessing that asks God to work in you what is pleasing in his sight. What Paul pleads for, the blessing is prayed over, is prayed over you. And when it comes I want you to hear everything you’ve seen this morning inside of that benediction. Hear the comfort in it. The blessing doesn’t rest on your consistency, it rests on Christ. That the offering is finished, the curtain is torn, the hands are still raised. You will walk out of here blessed, the Lord’s face on you, keeping you because he is faithful. But also hear it as a commission because the benediction is not only a comfort, it’s also sending. The same hands that bless you are the same hands that send you. Blessed people don’t stay in Bethany, they go back to the city, they go back into your homes, into the kitchen, into the cubicle, they take the sanctuary with them. And that’s why we’ve spent nine weeks working through our liturgy. The call, the word, the water, the songs, the preaching, the table. God has used every single element to shape you, not to give you a better Sunday, but to give you him for your whole week. Remember, this service is the rehearsal, your performance is your week. Nine weeks ago we said that God speaks first, this morning we’re saying that God also speaks last. And between his first word and his last word is your whole life. So give him all of it, your body, your mind, and your ordinary week. So when the benediction comes, don’t reach for your things or look for your keys and your kids, receive it. Receive the comfort, you are blessed. Receive the commission, you are sent. And let God have the last word in this room so that it shapes you to let him have the last word in every room you walk into this week. Because the God who had the first word over you will have the last word over you, and it’s a blessing. Amen? Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, we do thank you for all the mercies that you have given us. We pray, O God, that you would help us to respond to those mercies by giving you our life, our bodies, our minds, and our world. We pray that you would work in us hearts that see everything we do as an act of worship, pleasing to you. And we pray, O God, that you would send us out into this world, taking the good word and planting it deep into the hearts of people who so desperately need it. Help us to feast on your good word and to live off of it as we should. We pray these things in Christ’s name, amen.