Jesus & Nicodemus

And it is my privilege to share from God’s word with you this morning and also to kick off this new series. So of course, welcome to everyone here, a special welcome to guests. And especially if you were here last week for a Father’s Day service and you took up that challenge.

Three weeks in a row, maybe you’re on week number two, so you can check that off. If this is your first Sunday, we’re just happy you’re here. And of course, welcome to those that are joining us online as well.

Like I mentioned, we’re kicking off a new series here as you just saw called The Pursuit. And this is what it’s gonna look like here the next month. We’re gonna be looking at Jesus and his encounters.

So he steps down from eternity, puts on flesh. And not only does he head to the cross as we know, but he also has these encounters with individuals. And they’re recorded in scripture for a reason.

And so we’re gonna dive into these encounters, these dialogues that are in scripture, so we can glean something from it for us here today. And so as you can see today, we’re gonna be talking about Jesus and his encounter with a man named Nicodemus. And as we look at this, we’re gonna be looking at this big idea of pursuing.

Who’s pursuing to who? What are you pursuing? Before we get into the text, I’m kind of curious. Summertime, it’s time to maybe you feel revitalized. Maybe you’re taking on some new hobby, new something.

What have you been pursuing? And you can feel free to answer. What are you taking up? Gardening. What’s that? Speech? Beach, taking up the beach.

Underwater basket weaving. Anybody? Chicken keeping. Oh, nice, okay.

So if anyone needs eggs, right? For me, if you pass by and you’re wondering what in the world happened to Pastor Ben’s elbow that used to exist. Just this last week, I decided to pursue jujitsu. And not only is my elbow gone, but so is my ego.

That has been crushed, what was left of it. But we do this, though. We have pursuits.

We take up things. We find interest in things. We have hobbies.

We pursue degrees. We pursue promotions. We pursue comfort.

We pursue going on a vacation to go camping, to go to the beach, to have family time, to have personal goals. Sometimes the things that we pursue might be even fed to us because we just have these phones and devices listening to us all the time and pushing ads our way, right? And you’re like, oh, maybe I should start doing this. And you’re like, ah, they’re controlling me.

Which then raises the question, who’s pursuing whom? And we’re gonna see that here in this text. I want you to have that question in mind as we look at this encounter, Jesus and Nicodemus. Because at face value, it just seems quite obvious.

Nicodemus is pursuing Jesus, just like we pursue Jesus, right? But as we look at the text, we might see something different come out. So let’s go ahead and go there. We’re gonna be in John chapter three this morning, and it starts off this way.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. Hit pause. We already know a lot about Nicodemus in one sentence.

He is a Pharisee, which means he is an expert in the law, that he has a PhD in the Old Testament, a PhD in rules and being the guy that rains on everybody’s parade and tells them what they can and can’t do. And more than that, he is a ruler of the Jews, meaning that he is one of the 70 individuals that is part of the Sanhedrin. So not only does he know the law, but he’s enforcing the law.

He’s ruling over people. He’s judging over people. So he has his PhD and he’s also a judge or a senator.

Like, so he is a prominent guy and he knows his stuff. And we see this. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, “‘for no one can do these signs that you do “‘unless God is with him.'” Couple other interesting things to know.

So, okay, Jesus, this is the very beginning of the book of John. We’re only in chapter three and there’s already been some signs that have happened. We know for certain that Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding.

We also know right before this, he flipped over some tables the way that John records the timeline. Not sure what else, but these signs could be healings. They could be other miracles.

But Nicodemus is coming by night. Why? Could it be that he’s just so busy being a Pharisee and being a ruler of the Jews that that was the only time that he had so he had to come by night? Potentially. But there’s these other Pharisees.

And if you see these other Pharisees, these other leaders of the Jewish people, and their encounters with Jesus, they often don’t go very well, do they? They often want to accuse Jesus of being sent from Satan or doing something outside of God’s will. And Jesus doesn’t have very kind words back towards them either, calling them a brood of vipers. And so here, Nicodemus potentially is going, I don’t want the confrontation.

I don’t want the tension. I just want answers. I wanna know.

He’s doing signs. And you can even see here as he says, rabbi, showing him some respect. Hey, teacher, I know that you’re from God.

Notice he says from God. He doesn’t say he is God. I know you’re from God because how could you possibly do any of these things? Also, he doesn’t ask a question.

I know you’re from God. I know you can’t do these things unless you’re from God. And he’s just like making a statement.

So Nicodemus just comes to Jesus at night. And then Jesus replies. He knows his heart.

He says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born? I mean, this is a bizarre thought to be born again. Like how is that possible? And Nicodemus is just thrown off by this.

Yet Jesus knew he was gonna be thrown off. And just look at Jesus’ statement. You’re not gonna be able to see the kingdom of God unless this new birth, this rebirth happens.

This term born again, I think has been hijacked in like evangelicalism in America because we have this sense like to be born again means something. That you were one way and then you made this declaration of faith and you’re born again. You no longer live in those ways anymore.

Is that kind of what we understand it to be? When you look at the text in Greek, it can be born again, which is not to say that that’s completely wrong, but it also means born from above, which actually then gives us a sense into how is God always doing his work towards humanity? Coming from above to us. We’re gonna see that play out more and more. Nicodemus doesn’t understand it.

And then Jesus doubled down on this. He goes, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter. Oh, before you couldn’t see the kingdom of God.

Now you can’t enter the kingdom of God because that which is born of the flesh is flesh. And that which is born of spirit is spirit. Okay, I’m curious.

Let’s see how sharp 9AM got this. This looks like a pretty smart crew. Where aware in the church do we ever see water and the spirit? Well, okay, since you guys brought it up, let’s talk about baptism because the text talks about baptism.

And if we’re gonna talk about baptism, I know that I should preface it with this because of course we’re a Lutheran church. We have Lutheran doctrine here. This is what we teach.

We baptize infants. If you’ve been around for a little while, you’ve seen it, right? And we love doing that. We love baptizing babies.

We love baptizing adults. Yet now having been here five years on staff and one year as your pastor, I cannot tell you how many times I have had conversations about baptism. So I figure if I just do it now, then we’ll just get it all out of the way, right? And let me just say this too before we jump into it.

There are questions that arise from this. Ask them. Send me an email, reach out to myself or Pastor Tim.

Well, you can set up an appointment. I teach a baptism class every now and again for those that are getting baptized. But if you want to just come in and audit it, you’re already baptized, you just want to learn more, jump into the class, check it out.

Because what I know is this, is that I can try to explain and I can give the rationale and I can give the text, but this has been a debate among Christians for now the last 500 years about what’s going on in the waters of baptism. And I don’t know if I’m going to solve it here in the next 20 minutes. But if I do, well, praise be to God for that.

And I also know that people come from different backgrounds and the way that anyone’s heart is ever really changed is by the Holy Spirit. Because as I mentioned, I’ve had lots of conversations about baptism. And one that comes to mind is I was meeting with a family that was going to become members of our church and they were interested in different things that are happening at our church.

But before we got to any of that, they had to know what was going on with this infant baptism thing because they didn’t agree with it. And then so I went to chapter verse and then they went to chapter verse and then I went to chapter verse. And this went on for an hour until I remember really just being convicted by the Holy Spirit to go, you know what? I just by my own might, my own strength, I cannot just twist your arm behind you and tell you you need to believe what we believe.

If you don’t believe it, that’s okay. You’re still welcome to be guests here. But my encouragement is look at God’s word, pray and see what he does.

And they stayed with us for a couple more months and a couple more months. And then within a year, they approached me in the West Lobby to let me know, we see it. We see God’s work in the waters of baptism the way that you see it.

And we’d like to become members. Their kids were baptized. And so I recognize this as well, that God is gonna be working through his word, not just through human reasoning and all that.

And outside of that, I want you to also hear this too. As we talk about baptism, it’s not meant to just be this thing like this is what you have to believe. I want this for you because there’s a real comfort and confidence and assurance that comes with the way that we see what Christ is saying here about baptism and about rebirth.

So does that all sound good? Okay, so we’re gonna go to baptism class 101. Ready? All right, so we’re gonna go back actually just a couple of verses because this is the best thing to do when you’re reading scripture is to read it in context, right? So what just transpired before we see Nicodemus come on the scene? We go into John chapter two. And what Jesus says is that he saw people, many believed in his name, which is great.

They believed and they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man for he himself knew what was in man. Again, this is a sharp class this morning.

What is inside of man? Sin. Oh my goodness, gold star. You guys are even better than 9 a.m. It is sin.

If you look at all of scripture, what is inside of man? And what stain do we now carry with us from the very fall? Is sin. And in Romans chapter three, verses 10 and 11 said this. No one is righteous.

No, not one. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. No one seeks for God.

So this is what we have to get out of the way right out of the gate when we talk about baptism is number one, there’s a problem. And that problem is what? Sin. Sin is the problem.

We have this stain of sin. What are we gonna do about this stain of sin? Okay, we gotta use our will, our human will. Uh-oh, let’s go back a little bit further into the same book because it’s best to read things in context.

And then we see in John chapter one that you don’t have a will towards God. He was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own and his own people did not receive him.

But all who did receive him, how could they receive him? They believed in his name. He gave them the right to become children. They had to be born, not of blood, not of will or of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

So the only way to be born is to be born of God. The only way to be born is for God to born you, to birth you, to bring you to life because outside of him, you’re dead in your trespasses. This is now blowing Nicodemus’ mind.

He has been living out the law. He’s been following the law. He’s been enforcing the law.

Now Jesus tells him, cause he realizes that Nicodemus is thrown off by this. He says, do not marvel that I say to you, you must be born again. You see the wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sounds and you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. Nicodemus, quit trying to put me in a box. Quit trying to figure out how God works because he works in the ways that he chooses to work.

He works when and where and how he chooses towards his people and that is how God works. It’s not something that you’re always going to understand. And the way that he works is by his spirit and his spirit moves in the way that it wants to move.

Nicodemus again, so thrown off by this, just throwing his hands up in the air going, how, how can these things be? And I love Jesus’ response because I don’t, it’s not snarky, but you can hear it, can’t you? Jesus asked him, are you the teacher of Israel? And yet you do not understand these things. Truly, truly, truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. That at this point, Nicodemus does not have eyes to see what Jesus is teaching him.

He has all this head knowledge. He knows the scripture better than anybody. He knows the Old Testament better than anyone in this room knows the Old Testament.

So he’s heard the prophecies. He knows who’s supposed to be coming. He knows that there’s foreshadowing, even a baptism in the Old Testament, yet he doesn’t see it.

He is the expert, but he’s come to the end of himself where he has no answers. Even when he’s presented with this new information, he’s not able to integrate it into his belief because his belief is still based off of works. What must I do? How can this be? How can I be born? How can I be, can you hear it? How could someone be born again? Do I need to go back into my mother’s womb? He is the active agent.

He is the one that’s still doing the verbs. How do I get saved? If I’m gonna be born again, see the kingdom of God, enter the kingdom of God, then I need to enter into the womb, right? No. He’s still not getting it.

Maybe you’ve been there where you’ve come to the end of yourself. It was just a couple of weeks ago that I had one of my boys, and then just he piped up from the backseat as we’re on a drive, totally unprompted, totally out of context of anything that was going on. He just goes, dad, how, and he was trying to form it.

How could, how was Jesus born to person if God made all the people? How was Jesus born in time and space 2,000 years ago if before that Jesus is God and he made all the people? And I thought to myself, Ben, Ben, you consider yourself a teacher of Shepherd’s Gate, yet you do not know, like, no, okay, we actually took some time and we actually did talk about it. Yes, Christ existed before he was incarnate. He was always there.

But there are these moments, especially from kids where you get these questions out of left field that can take you back and go, wait, I thought I knew what was going on. I thought I had an understanding, which could even be you here this morning going, wait, I thought, I thought I knew how I came to faith. I thought I knew how the waters of baptism work.

It is okay for us to come to these places where we are to the end of ourselves. We see it here with Nicodemus, where it seems admirable that he’s come and asking these questions, yet he doesn’t have the one thing that he needs to be able to see, which is the Holy Spirit. Jesus goes on and says, I have told you earthly things and you do not believe.

How could you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who is ascended from heaven, the son of man. He is saying that he is God. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

So he knows, here’s Nicodemus going, how can these things be? How is this possible? What do I need to do? Am I supposed to go back into my brother’s world? How does this all work? This doesn’t seem to make any sense. And then Jesus is going, you don’t understand it. The spirit moves how he wants it to move.

And then seemingly going, hey, you’re the expert in the law, right? Got the Old Testament memorized. Let’s just talk about one of the stories in the Old Testament. Hey, Nicodemus, you remember that one time when the Israelites were bitten by all these poisonous snakes and they’re dying? And then the people came to the conclusion that the way that we need to become healed is we need to put a bronze serpent up on a pole, and then that’s gonna heal all of us, because that makes sense.

Does that make sense? No. If it does, then, okay. If that’s what you do when you’re sick, like, no.

But it makes sense if God is telling you to do it in faith, that there are all these examples in the Old Testament where God is taking people into places where he is gonna be the one that’s doing the work. He is the one doing the words. He is the active agent.

And it’s not dependent on the people, but it’s dependent on the faithfulness of God, not on the faithfulness of the individuals. And seemingly, Jesus is telling them, hey, you don’t get it, do you? There are these things in faith, there are parts of being a Christian that don’t make any earthly sense, because it’s about a spiritual reality, which then raises this question for us. We’re being reminded here that Moses and the Israelites, they looked up to a serpent, that we are actually called to look upon Jesus in trouble, but where do we look? Where do we look in crisis? When things start falling apart in our world, where do we look? And I think that we should all go to God in prayer.

That includes me, I should, but oftentimes we look to knowledge. We look to information, we look to the almighty Google or chat GTP or whatever it is, and we try to find the answers, because that’s gonna be able to give us the correct information and we’re gonna be able to solve the problem. We’re in the middle of a crisis that we’re just gonna try to like grit our teeth and we’re just gonna perform.

We’re gonna do better. We’re gonna become self-reliant. We’re gonna look for the approval of others.

We’re gonna look to our own emotions to make sure that we’re settled. In any of these things, in crisis, if you’re looking inside of yourself, looking to another individual, it will always fall short. It might be a good Band-Aid fix, but you’re putting a Band-Aid over a bullet wound.

It reminds me of another story, this is actually the same kid, that he was having trouble going to sleep one night. He comes out like an hour past bedtime and he’s being like really sheepish and he’s like really shy about wanting to talk about it. He’s like, okay, but he’s really distraught.

He’s really upset. I finally get it out of him, what’s going on? Dad, something bit me. It’s like, is there a bug in your bed? Did something bite? Do we need to go check? He’s like, no, no, no.

I think the devil bit my butt. And I don’t know why I went there, but I could go down this, I could go like, well, that doesn’t make any sense. Like, let’s talk about this, he’s not there.

No, I think by the grace of God, where I went immediately was, I said, son, do you know something amazing happened five years ago? See, five years ago, you came to the waters of baptism and I was able to baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And that day, the Holy Spirit came to reside and live inside of you. And so now God is always with you.

God is in you. And let me ask you this. And I began to ask him some questions.

Is God big? Yeah. Is God strong? Yeah. Does God love you? Yeah.

Is God bigger than the devil? Yeah. So because of what was done to you and for you and is still residing in you to this day, you have nothing to fear when you go back to your bed. And he went off to bed and went to sleep.

This is where, again, I think that this actually, where the rubber hits the road. And this is why we need to talk about these things of our identity that we receive in baptism and what God does in baptism. Because what’s gonna happen and what has already happened and may be happening to you right now in your life is that the devil’s trying to bite your butt.

There could be stuff going wrong in your life right now. And you could be going down the list of like, how do I figure this stuff out? Okay, I feel guilt and I feel shame about the things that I’ve said, about the things that I’ve done, about the things that I haven’t done that I should have done. And you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna go to my performance and I’m gonna rely on myself.

Or I’m gonna go to my knowledge and I’m gonna go, I’m gonna figure out this situation on my own. I’m gonna go, oh, you know what? I just know that I know that I know that God loves me, which is good. But God gives us something with teeth, something that we can actually hang our hat on and he knows that we need these things, that he lovingly gives us a gift like communion where we get to experience his very body and blood.

But he also gives us another amazing gift knowing that we’re tactile human beings and that he is a multimedia gracious God that wants to work through all of our senses. And he wants us to look back to something like baptism to say, do you remember that? It wasn’t just a symbol. It wasn’t just something in recognition.

It wasn’t something that you did. There was a work that was done that day and it was on God’s part towards you. You were dead in your trespasses, that you were not alive, that you were an enemy of God and that through those waters that you were united as it tells us to Christ, that you were adopted into sonship, that you now became his, that he enlivened you with his Holy Spirit, gave you the forgiveness of sins and then sealed you with a promise.

And so that when you’re in the midst of crisis, when the devil is attacking your conscience, when you feel weary and wary of am I really saved, that you don’t look to yourself, that you look outside of yourself to this gift of baptism that connects you to Christ. And all too often people might push back and look, oh, so you’re saved by baptism or you’re saved by Jesus. No, baptism connects me to Jesus.

It is my initiation into the family. It is the adoption papers saying I am his. And so no matter how far I run and roam and go and push away, when I come back, those papers are still the same papers.

My child, whom I love, that you don’t need to be re-baptized, re-commit about you and your faith or conjuring up will, but rather looking to the one who’s secure, the one who has done all the work. We see these famous words that follow. Again, in this discourse, Nicodemus and Jesus.

Let’s read this first verse together because we just have to, right? For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. We can stop right there. John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that God loved the world in this way.

Who’s doing the verbs? God. Who’s the active agent? God. This is the way that it works throughout all of scripture.

God approaches them in the garden. God chooses Moses. God chooses Abraham.

God has chosen you. And now he uses means. He uses things like the waters of baptism to connect you to Christ.

This gives us utter and complete confidence of his love for us. He didn’t send his son of the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Now, whoever believes in him is not condemned.

How do you believe if you have no will? How do you believe if you can’t come to this conclusion like Nicodemus, the expert in the Old Testament? You can’t, unless he gives it to you as a gift. Now, whoever believes is not condemned. Whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the son of God.

And again, going back, remember that verse from John 2? Not believing in Jesus because of signs, not because he’s a miracle worker, not because he’s a great teacher, but because he’s savior. That is what it means to believe in the son of God. And again, this gift of faith, this gift of belief, it’s not a human choice.

It’s not based off of effort. It’s actually a gift that is to be received and then lived out. It’s said this way, it comes out of a resource that we use called the small catechism that just talks about some of the key doctrines of our faith.

And in this section in particular, we’re talking about the apostles’ creed, the third article of the creed and the explanation of the third article of creed is stated this way. I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified me and kept me in the true faith.

You’re being held in that faith that he’s the one that draws you to this faith. When I meet with new members, what I recognize is a lot of times they have this idea, like we all do, like, oh, I’m church shopping. You know, I was church shopping and I landed here.

No, I smirk because it’s like, well, the Holy Spirit’s been working in your life. He’s the one doing the work. And in our earthly sense, just like Nicodemus, when we see earthly things, we think about it in earthly terms.

But when we read God’s word and we see what spiritual reality is actually taking place is that the spirit is moving, the spirit is working, the spirit is making us alive and drawing us to God. I don’t know about you, but I know for me, there’s a sigh of relief that can come. I don’t have to conjure it up.

I don’t have to work for it. It is a gift that’s been given to me. Now I need to steward that gift of faith.

I need to come to church. I want it to grow. I want to come to the table.

I want to be reminded again and again and again. But seeing that he is the one that is ultimately doing the work just leads to such a great deal of rest because the day comes for all of us, unless Jesus returns, that we’re called home. And one of the very first questions that I’ll ask with anyone who is about to lay their loved one to rest is are they baptized? Because we begin our services that way and we’ll spend any funeral service, and if you’ve been here, you’ve seen it, we’ll talk about the person.

But comfort and confidence about where their eternal salvation is is not based off of what their church attendance look like, how many Bible studies they led, if they ever led a work site or a mission trip. We always start with the waters of baptism in Romans chapter six because anyone who has been united to Christ in a baptism like his has been united to a death like his, and they’ve also been united to Christ in a resurrection like his as well. That we can remind everyone that there’s been a work that’s been done outside that individual through the waters of baptism that has now changed their heart.

And we trust and believe that God has held them in that provided they didn’t run away. That they didn’t turn away and renounce their faith. There’s great comfort that comes in that, that God is the one who’s doing the work.

Their discourse and dialogue, it closes out in this way. Jesus is reminding them of the severity of this. And this is the judgment, the light has come into the world and the people love darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works be exposed. Zoom out for just a second and remember the context. Nicodemus is talking to him at night, in the dark.

Hey, Nicodemus, you know what people do in the dark? They’re sinners. He’s calling them out. This is what the darkness is about.

The darkness is things are exposed, they’re hidden, you don’t wanna be seen. You want other people to know that you’ve been talking to me. But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it can be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

Now, I highlight that because you come to this end of this conversation, you go, whoa, whoever does what is true comes to the light. Uh-oh. Does everybody in here do everything that’s true all the time? But to come into the light, to have your darkness exposed is actually what it’s talking about here.

To come into repentance, to recognize that you are, just like the first couple of verses here, you are someone who does things that are wicked and evil and wrong and contrary to God’s will. But to come into the light, to see the true light, is to come close to Christ. Not that you yourself are the light, but that you’re willing to have your darkness exposed as you’re coming to him going, I’m dependent on you.

You might ask, what then happens with Nicodemus? There’s three recorded encounters with Nicodemus in the book of John. The first that we just read, then one in chapter seven when Nicodemus seemingly defends Jesus in front of the other Pharisees or at least ask the question, shouldn’t we put him on trial? Doesn’t he deserve a trial before we try to kill him? And then here, after Jesus, who’d lived a perfect life, then died a criminal’s death as he’s hung to a cross, deserted by all of his followers, scourged, beaten, bloodied, and bruised, now dead, being taken down by Joseph of Arimathea, and then also Nicodemus. No longer in the dark, no longer by night, no longer hiding, but in daylight before other Pharisees, before the Romans, before other members of the Sanhedrin.

And then what he does is he brings a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 75 pounds, which would be the amount that you would offer up for a king. And that we don’t know because the scripture doesn’t tell us exactly what is going on in Nicodemus’ heart. What does he believe? What has changed? What we can see is that even though Nicodemus was the one that started the conversation seemingly, that Jesus was pursuing Nicodemus.

Jesus planted seeds of hope. He could have pushed him off. He could have not answered his questions, but he entered into this conversation that he was drawing Nicodemus to himself, not unlike how Jesus is drawing himself to you this morning to remind you if you’re already there and you already believe in him, that you can rest.

You can have confidence that the work of the cross is finished that you are held in his hand. That through those baptismal waters, that all those things that come after you, sin, death, and the devil, that they’ve been drowned and now you’ve been brought to new life. He’s pursuing you so that you know that.

And if you’ve not come to that place yet, then hear from God’s word that he’s coming after you, lovingly pursuing you to fully tell you, yes, you do works of the wicked and dark and evil, but you know what? All those things have been nailed to a tree so that I can love you and that I can be with you forever. And so I pray that this sermon in this series continues to be a blessing to our congregation as we’re reminded time and time again, as we open his word, that we have a God who loves us, a God who is after us, a God who continually and relentlessly pursues us so that we know that we are his and that we are loved. Amen.