Sermons tagged with Prayer

Thanks so much for being here this morning. It's good to be back with you. I missed last week on a little trip. You may have seen on social media that I had a mustache for that trip, which is why my beard is so thin today. I promise you, I'm trying to grow my beard back just as quickly as I possibly can so I don't look like the new youth pastor giving you sermons. Speaking of the youth pastor giving sermons, Kyle did an excellent job last week. I'm so grateful for him and his ability to fill in. He's on a fall retreat right now, so your applause means nothing with the students. So we're praying for a safe return and for life change there. I'm so excited to step into the Christmas season with you guys. I love that we're decorated, that we're singing the Christmas carols, that we're getting ready for Christmas. Of course, I love the Christmas season, the reminders and the time that we get to spend with friends and family. For me, it means going back home to Atlanta and getting extended time with friends and family there. And so Christmas is really a reminder of blessings. It's a celebratory time, and it's a time that we really, really enjoy and look forward to. But for those same reasons, Christmas for many people is hard. For those same reasons, because it's a time of family, because it's a time to reflect on blessings, because it's a time to celebrate, for many of us, Christmas is difficult. We know that Christmas and the holiday season is one of the most difficult seasons of the year for some folks. And so before we just jump into Christmas and everything that it is and all the joy of Christmas and rah-rah around here, I wanted to stop and take a minute and acknowledge that for some people, December is hard. For some people, this month is difficult because of old wounds or maybe new ones. This is going to be a difficult season for you. And if it is a difficult season for you, in a room this size with this many people, there are inevitably folks who are not looking forward to Christmas and all the reminders that it brings. And if that's you, I want you to know that we're praying for you, that we care about you, and that we see you. And let's not, in our own lives, just plow through with joy while we ignore the fact that this may be a difficult season for those around us. I would hate to do that as a church. For that reason, because this can be a little bit of a difficult season for some folks, I wanted to talk this morning about the joy of forgiveness because I believe that forgiveness can actually be a key that unlocks a more joyful holiday for the rest of us. I'll tell you where I had this idea. I thought about it in a way that I hadn't thought about it before. A couple weeks ago, I went and saw that new Mr. Rogers movie with Tom Hanks. I'm not going to ruin it for anybody, but you should really go see that movie. It was a really great movie. And forgiveness plays an integral role in that movie. And I began to think about it in ways that I hadn't thought of it before. And it actually made holiday seasons better for the people in the movie because forgiveness was extended. And so it occurs to me with a church family our size, it's entirely possible that some forgiveness received or some forgiveness extended could reunite some families, could help redeem some relationships, could very well be the key to unlocking a more joyful and reflective and grateful holiday season for many of us in the church. If not that, as we move forward, forgiveness is a principle that we all have to deal with. So this week is the joy of forgiveness. Next week is the joy of gratitude. And then after that, we're going to do the joy of Christmas. And then the last Sunday of the year is the joy of skipping church together because there is no church, okay? So we all get to experience that joy at the same time and in the same way. But I wanted to talk about forgiveness, not just because I feel like it's helpful for the holidays, but because the Bible makes a pretty big deal out of forgiveness. The Bible has a lot to say about this idea. There's actually almost 90 verses in the Bible that have the word forgive or forgiveness. And a lot of those talk about how God forgives us. A lot of those talk about why we are supposed to give others. And we're going to get to those verses that are represented here in a minute. But as I was looking into the topic of forgiveness, one of the things that I had not considered before is that forgiveness is such a big deal to God. It's so important to God, that he makes it a daily prayerful exercise for us. I had not really thought about forgiveness in that way until I got into what the Bible had to say on the topic, and I see in the Lord's Prayer that it says forgiveness should be a part of what we do every day. If you have a Bible, you can turn it over to Matthew 6, and you can see there Jesus is praying. The disciples have asked him, how do you pray? Like, we know how to pray, but you're praying, and clearly you know how to do it differently than we do, so how do you pray? This is not, we don't just recite these words every day. This is a model for how we should pray. And there's different elements of the prayer. It's very much worth exploring and discussing what are the different things that Jesus includes in this pattern of prayer. But one of the things that he includes is to acknowledge that we are forgiven by God and then to daily and prayerfully forgive those who have hurt us. And I never thought about it that way. I'm not sure that I would have somebody to forgive every day. I don't know that people are offending me or hurting me every day. But as I sat down and I thought about it and I tried to apply this this week, It's a worthwhile exercise to ask ourselves, what hurts am I holding on to? What things am I still grabbing on to? Who do I need to extend forgiveness to? Who am I still dragging through the mud? Who am I still keeping attached to myself in that moment when they weren't at their best? What things do I have to forgive? To God, forgiveness is such a big deal that he makes it a daily prayerful exercise because we'll see later, I believe that there's freedom found in forgiveness. And I actually think it would be a worthwhile exercise for us. It would make the sermon more practical and less ethereal if we would all in our heads kind of think, okay, if I were going to forgive somebody, who could I forgive? If somebody has hurt me, if I needed to walk up to somebody or write an email or make a phone call today and say, hey, listen, I just want you to know that this happened. It hurt me. I forgive you. Who would that be for you? Or would they just say, like, if you said, hey, I forgive you, would they be like, for what? That does not count. You got to have somebody that has hurt you in some way, and you can think about, man, if I were to call them and say, listen, I want you to know I'm not holding this against you anymore, who would that person be for you? I think that's a helpful exercise. As we think about that and we reflect on God's commandment, God's instruction to daily and prayerfully forgive others, it's important to note the motivation that the Bible gives. Because it doesn't just tell us that we should forgive, but it supplies us with a why. I said earlier there's about 90 verses that mention forgive or forgiveness. Most of those, a lot of those are verses about how God forgives us. But a lot of them are encouraging us to forgive others. And most of the time they have a motive there to forgive others that's common amongst all these verses. So we're going to look in our Bibles at Colossians 3.13. But as we look there, I want you to know that that is the archetypal verse on forgiveness. Colossians 3.13 is the archetypal verse on forgiveness. It is the verse. If you want to know, like, what does the Bible say about why we should forgive, that we should forgive, and why we should do it, turn to Colossians 3.13, and it's pretty much the summary verse of what the Bible has to say about this. And Colossians 3.13 says this. I'm going to start in 12. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. So if you wanted to ask, what does the Bible have to say about forgiveness? It tells me to forgive, but why should I do it? That's the verse. That's the archetypal verse that will tell us why we need to forgive. We forgive because God forgave us. You should forgive somebody else because God forgave you. And this isn't an unfamiliar principle for us. Even for those of us in the room who might not call themselves Christians. If you were here this morning, you wouldn't call yourself a believer. You're just kind of kicking the tires around. You're a spiritual person. Someone else invited you to come and you wanted to be nice and so you came. If that's you and you might not believe in the same God that we believe in, you can at least intellectually concede that if there is a God and that God is perfect, they are likely offended by our imperfection, right? That's not that big of a jump. If a God exists that is perfect, we have, in our imperfection, likely offended that God. And so that God has extended forgiveness to us. Now, for Christians, we know the story. We know the drill. We know that God sent His son to die for us because of our imperfection. And we know at times with our life and with our choices that we have trampled on that death, that we have presumed upon it. We all in the room, if you're a believer, I would be willing to bet everything I have that we've had this thought process. I shouldn't do this thing because it's not right, but I know God's going to forgive me anyways, so let's go. We've all had that thought. Even the nicest among us, even the sweetest, littlest old ladies have had this thought of, I know I shouldn't do this thing, but I know God's going to forgive me, so here I go. We've all presumed upon God's goodness and grace in that way, and in that way, disrespected the death of the Son that He sent for us. So the idea that we have offended God and that God has extended to us forgiveness is not a foreign one to a Christian. This is why, this is the reason we're told to forgive others, that we should forgive others. Why? Because God forgave us. There's even a parable about this. Jesus told a whole story about this that most of us know. There was a guy that owed the king, we'll say $500,000. He goes to the king and the king says, listen, I know you can't pay $500,000, so you're good. Like you don't owe me anything. The guy's relieved. He thought he was gonna get killed or put in prison. He's incredibly relieved. He goes and as he's leaving, he bumps into another guy that owes him 50 bucks. And he says, hey, you owe me 50 bucks. And the guy says, I'm sorry, I don't have $50 right now. And he said, you're going to jail. And he calls the cops and he puts them in jail. The king finds out about this guy and he throws the guy that owed him $500,000 in jail. It's a very quick version of the parable. And the parable, the point of the parable is this guy was forgiven for a $500,000 debt. And because he was forgiven of so great a debt, he should have been willing to forgive this guy 50 bucks. And so we forgive the $50 offenses because we recognize that our offenses are more than that. And I would say that this motivation is the right motivation for most offenses. I want to talk about two different kinds of forgiveness today. I want to call this kind of forgiveness immediate forgiveness. Immediate forgiveness is the right response for most offenses. Immediate, thoughtful, daily, prayerful forgiveness is the right response for most offenses. When people do something to harm us, they do something to wrong us, they say something mean when they lash out, they act gruff. I had a guy in traffic yesterday that flipped me off. I have no idea why. I legitimately don't. I was just driving along and I came up behind him and then I went around him and he was doing five miles an hour under the speed limit and I went around him and he hung me the bird. And I thought, I don't understand what just happened. I really wanted to stop my car and talk to him. Be like, bro, like I'm not even mad. Just what's going on? That situation, immediate forgiveness. Don't care about that guy. There was something going on in his day that wasn't happening in my day. I hope it helped him out to relieve his stress in that manner. It doesn't matter to me. Most offenses can be forgiven immediately. As a matter of fact, if you think of the people that have hurt you or hurts that you might be carrying right now, I bet if you see what they did to you, the hurt that they caused you in light of the hurt that you've caused others, that you could probably extend them grace. I think about our spouses. If you're married, there are so many, you're not going to believe this. You're not going to believe it when I tell you this. Some of y'all know Sweet Jen, and you know how great she is. There are some things that she does that get on my nerves, and I have to just give her grace for, I have to forgive her. But every time I do, I try to think of all the things that she's forgiving me for that she doesn't even tell me about. And it makes it much easier to forgive. And so this idea that grace and forgiveness have been extended to us, and if we'll just be empathetic with whoever hurt us, we can extend grace and forgiveness to them too. That's the right response for most offenses. And I would say to you this morning, if it's possible for you in your life with the people who have hurt you, if it's possible to extend immediate forgiveness to them, then it's right and good for you to do it. And you should. Scripture tells us you should. But even as I say that, I think that there are some people here who would say, buddy, you don't understand the way that I've been hurt. You don't understand what's happened to me. What's happened to me was not a $50 offense. There are some of you that when I started talking about the idea of forgiveness, it popped right into your head who has hurt you and how they've hurt you. And it's entirely possible that you can hear me talking up here and be like, that's well and good to just immediately forgive somebody, but buddy, I'm not there yet. Nate, I can't handle that. If you knew what had happened to me, you might even think it's well and good for you to preach that. That's not fair for you to say that I should just go and forgive someone. You don't know what happened. You can't relate. You don't understand. And to that, I would say you're right. I have to admit that I can't relate. There are no great offenses in my life. I've never been faced with a challenge of difficult forgiveness. I've never been faced with the challenge of what I'm calling having to offer processed forgiveness. Some offenses require processed forgiveness. Immediate forgiveness is just not practical. It's just not going to happen. The hurt is too deep. The wound is too profound. I just can't turn around and go, you know what? I forgive you. My life is wrecked, but I forgive you because God tells me to. That's just not a practical thing to do. And I want to acknowledge this morning that some offenses require processed forgiveness. I think of a friend of mine who, when he was eight years old, his dad left the house, left him and his brother and his sister and his mom. He grew up without that dad. He was saddled with a stepdad who didn't care about him. In adulthood, his dad passed away early. He was the only one of his siblings who went to the funeral. And he had to sit there and look at this man who caused him a life of pain and abuse and neglect, who had never said a kind word to him, but he showed up at his funeral anyways, and he had to find a way to forgive that man so that he could move on with his life. That's a lifetime of neglect. I've never had to forgive like that. And I admit that. Some of y'all have. Some of y'all are walking through that process. And I want you to know that I think the Bible makes space for this process forgiveness. If you look in Luke 17, Jesus is telling us that we should forgive our brother or our sister who offends us. But he says, pay attention to yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him. Let him know, hey, that's wrong. And if he repents, forgiven. There's this admission in the text and in the teaching of Jesus that sometimes we're not ready to forgive right away. Sometimes there's reasons to withhold forgiveness. Sometimes we're waiting on something before we offer the forgiveness that we're instructed. And I want to be a voice that tells you, that's all right. If you can't get over it right away, that's all right. If the hurt is too deep or too profound, that's okay. You're allowed some processed forgiveness, but we should arrive there eventually. And because I've never had to walk through that deep of a challenge in my own forgiveness, I turned in my research to some people who had and tried to read stories and listen to talks about people who had overcome things in their life. And I ran across a girl, oddly enough, named Sarah Montana. That's a real name. I thought it was fake when I saw it. It's legit. Her name is Sarah Montana, and she gave a TED Talk. The details of that TED Talk are on your bulletin. So if you want to go home and watch it, you can. If you are one that is carrying a deep pain and is struggling through the idea of forgiveness, I think you'll find it incredibly helpful. But in that talk, she shares her story. And her story is, at the age of 22, she had just graduated college, and she was about to start her job and her career working at a hedge fund when she received word that a kid that she had grown up around in their neighborhood had come into their home and murdered her brother and her mom. Instant, deep, and profound hurt. And it was his fault. And so she shared her story and the process of forgiveness. And one of the things she said was that because she believed it to be the right thing, because she thought it would bring her some sort of healing, because she felt pressure from other people to go ahead and do this, she forgave him right away. She said publicly that she forgave him. She came out on the news and said that she forgave him. But she realized years later, she said the words, but she never really forgave him. And in that way, she kept him tethered to her and her life stayed tethered to that moment. And she desperately wanted to be able to forgive him. She even noted that she searched the Bible and she said, the Bible seems real high on forgiveness. It seems to talk really highly of it, but there's not a lot on how to do it. And so she began this exploration on how do I actually forgive? Like, what are the things that I have to do or say? What are the magic words? And in her exploration, she came upon this truth. It's actually an old Jewish truth. It's a teaching of Judaism that you cannot forgive a murderer for the murder because that murder didn't happen to you. It happened to whoever it was that you love. So you have to forgive them. You have to actually name the things that they took from you and forgive them for those. And so for her, she was able to start listing them off. That day, that kid took from her a friendship that she wanted to enjoy for her whole life with her brother that you cannot replicate. You cannot replicate. If siblings are close, you cannot replicate that relationship. And he took that from her. She had to forgive him of that. He took wedding pictures from her. He took the joy of her mom seeing her walk down the aisle. He took from her the joy of her mom experiencing her kids and becoming a grandmother. She had to name the things that he took from her because she couldn't just blanket forgive him for the murders because those didn't happen to her. She had to actually name the things that he took from her. And as she was talking and as I was sitting in this research, it occurred to me this idea about forgiveness that I had never thought of before, that withheld forgiveness exists because a debt is owed. Forgiveness is withheld because a debt is owed. I never considered that before. But isn't that what we do? And our petty little arguments, when we're mad at somebody, when they said something offensive to us, when our spouse hurt our feelings, when somebody we work with hurt our feelings and we give them the silent treatment, what are we waiting on? Waiting on an I'm sorry. The I'm sorry is the debt owed. You've offended me in this way. I will forgive you, but I'm gonna hold on to my forgiveness and I'm gonna hold on to this hurt until you salve it with an I'm sorry. That's the debt they owe. Isn't that so true? This person that murdered her mom and her brother took from her things. He owed her a debt and she couldn't offer the forgiveness until he reconciled that debt. Somebody owes us money, we can't really forgive them until they give us the money back. Someone hurt us in some profound way, we are withholding our forgiveness until they can make it right. When someone hurts us, they take from us our confidence or our security, our sense of self-worth or our innocence. We withhold that forgiveness until they can somehow offer the healing to make it right. And it makes sense to us to say, now you are forgiven. We withhold forgiveness because we are waiting on a payment for a debt that is owed. And isn't it interesting? I never thought about it before, but isn't it interesting how that's how Jesus words it in the Lord's prayer? In the versions that are more accurate word for word, it says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. The language has been there all along. Before we can forgive someone, we have to acknowledge what the debt is that they owe us. What have you taken from me that I am trying to get back? What pain have you caused me that I need you to heal before I can offer you this forgiveness? That's why it was revolutionary for me to finally understand the freedom found in forgiveness and what biblical forgiveness really is. Biblical forgiveness says you are released from your debt because I trust Jesus to pay it for you. Biblical forgiveness says you are released from the debt that you owe me because I trust Jesus to pay it for you. You don't have to say you're sorry for the thing. You don't have to make me feel better. You don't have to heal my soul because I believe that Jesus is going to pay it better than you ever could. We withhold forgiveness for somebody. We're waiting for them to make us right, to make us whole, to make us feel better again, to give us back the confidence that they stole, to give us back the innocence that they took, to give us back the self-worth that they took from us. And when we forgive, we say, listen, I'm not going to hold you accountable for that debt anymore because I acknowledge that you can't even pay it and that Jesus is going to be way better at paying it than you are. And when Scripture says that we should forgive as God forgave us, isn't that how God forgave us? We offended Almighty God with something that we did, and we owed Him a death, that we owed Him a debt for our offense. And He says, no, no, no, you're released from that debt. You do not have to pay that because I have trusted my son Jesus to pay it on your behalf. And so when we forgive others, isn't it the same thing? When we can look at somebody who represents a life of hurt and pain and neglect and say, you know what? What you did was wrong. The way you treated me was not all right. And you have hurt me profoundly with the choices that you've made. And you owe me for that. But you're off the hook. I release you from that debt because I believe that my Savior can pay it better than you ever could. I don't need you to heal me because Jesus is going to do it for you. I don't need you to make me whole anymore because Jesus is going to make me whole. I think that there is freedom and power in forgiveness because we can finally acknowledge the things that I've been clinging to that I feel like you owe me to make me better again. I acknowledge you can never do that in the first place. So you're off the hook and Jesus is going to pay your debt because he's better at it anyways. That is biblical forgiveness. And my hope and prayer is that as a church and the different families and relationships represented here, that we would walk in that freedom of forgiveness. That we would acknowledge the person who hurt me, it was wrong. And they do owe me. No one's arguing that they don't. But they can never pay me in a way that's going to make me whole. And because of that, they're forgiven. And I'm going to trust Jesus to pay the debt that they owe me for that offense. So as we move into Christmas together, when you think about your lives and your families, first of all, if you're the one that needs to be forgiven because you were dumb, admit it. Make it easier for them. Go to them and say, you know, listen, I want to acknowledge that I owe you a debt and I'm gonna do everything I can to pay it, but I know it's not gonna be good enough and I'm sorry. More importantly, believers, if it is within your power to reconcile a relationship by picking up the phone or writing an email or grabbing a coffee and sitting down and saying, you know what? You hurt me and it's not right and it's not okay, but I've been waiting for you to pay a debt that you can't pay and you don't owe it to me anymore. I'm gonna go to Jesus for the healing that I need for this and I'm gonna love you and your own health too. Then let's do that. Let's have some reconciliations going on this month. Let's have some good conversations that happen this month. Let's pursue forgiveness as a church. And let's experience together the joy and the freedom of forgiveness. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much and are so grateful for you. For the way that you love us, for the way that you forgive us, for the way that you set us free from the things that we have done and the offenses that we have brought. Lord, for those in the room who are hurting, who have somebody in their life that it will just be a challenge to forgive, I pray they would first know and see and feel that you see them, that you are with them, and that you are walking in that pain with them. Give them the strength and the courage and the vision to see that the healing that they are waiting on can only ever come from you. And in your way and in your will, give them the strength to forgive. Reconcile relationships even in this room this morning, God. It's in your son's name we ask. Amen.

Well, hello. This is the last part of our series in Ephesians. We've been going through Ephesians now for six weeks, so this week we arrive at Ephesians chapter 6. Ephesians chapter 6 is a famous passage. It's got the armor of God starting in verse 10, and that's where we are going to land this week. I've been excited to get here and have thought a lot about the best, most effective way to approach this passage. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn to Ephesians chapter 6. If you don't have a Bible, I would encourage you to grab the one in the seat back in front of you and go ahead and turn there so that you can be looking through the text as we go through it together. I always think it's helpful if we look at it and we process it at the same time in the same way. So as I approach the text this week, I actually, I did the normal research that I do, but I wanted to call a buddy of mine who has some experience in combat. This particular guy did what we see on the movies. He's a special forces guy over in Iraq, Afghanistan. And they would do night raids every night where you drop in, you go into somebody's home or a compound or a building, you have a target and then you have the secondary targets and you try to either eliminate or obtain them. That's the technical term for kill or kidnap them. So you go in and you do that, and that's what they did every night. And then for part of the career, they watch on the screen as the rest of the team does it. It's like the stuff you see in the movies. And so I thought, I want to know what his perspective is on this text. And so I gave him a call, and we talked it through, and I love military stuff. I am too feeble of body to have been effective in it, but I like to hear about other people who are. And so we talked at length about things, and he shared with me two things that I thought would be really helpful for us as we approach this passage. He told me that in a good raid, when you would go in and you've got your target, he's in the house or he's in the compound or whatever it is, and you're bringing these special forces operators to bear on the target, you're trying to obtain the target. I think we kind of picture that in the movies as depicted as a firefight, like you drop in from a helicopter and like everybody's, they're armed and you're armed and you fight your way into the compound and you get the person. But he said really and truly what they would try to do rather than just landing close and letting them know, hey, we're here and inviting the conflict, that what they would try to do whenever they possibly could is drop about six kilometers away from the target and then sneak in, walk in under the cover of night without being detected. And what he told me was an effective raid would end with no shots being fired. That they would get into the compound, into the home, into the building, into the area, and that they would have their primary target and the secondary and the tertiary targets, and everybody would be at gunpoint before the lights would get flipped on, and then the lights get flipped on, and everybody surrenders and go home. His words were, actually, if they decide to resist at that point, that's on them. I thought, well, gosh, I would not resist. But he said those were the best raids, was when there was no shots fired at all, when the enemy didn't even realize that they were in a conflict until they were already captured. I thought that was interesting. I'll tell you why in a minute, but I wanted to talk about this other point that he made too. He said the most dangerous time for him and his teams was actually not the firefight. It was not when they were engaged in combat. They were prepared for that. They had a plan for that. They knew where everybody was going to be. They knew where all the targets were going to be. If the enemy did something, they knew how to counter that. They were ready. They're not worried at all about once they're engaged in conflict. The most dangerous point of any raid for them was actually the approach to the target. Because you don't know while you're approaching the target if they can see you. You don't know if they're about to open up machine guns on you. You don't know if you're about to be under attack. You don't know if you're about to be ambushed. The most dangerous time, he said, was as they were approaching the target. And he actually noticed in his early years of doing this, in the early months of doing this, that as they're approaching the target, he's not really aware of what's around him. His head is already in the compound. He's already at the plan. He's going through, when we get here, I'm going to go to the eastern wall, and we're going to breach this door, and there's going to be this many people, and yada, yada. He's going through this in his mind, but he noticed that the veterans, the guys who had done dozens if not hundreds of these, seemed to be almost talking to themselves the whole way up, concentrating on other things. And he learned that what these guys are doing is they're constantly assessing their surroundings. They're constantly preparing themselves. If we get attacked now, I can duck behind that wall. I can go behind that rock. That car will provide cover. We can return fire from here. They're constantly, every hundred feet, redoing their attack plan and their defense strategy. If we get attacked, if they throw it open on us here, then I'm going to go here, and my men can go here, and we can attack, and then we can counter like this. And in both instances about the plan and the strategy of these raids and the danger encountered in these raids, it occurred to me that the most dangerous time of any conflict is when you don't realize you're in one. The most dangerous time of any conflict is when you don't yet realize that you're in it. Those guys sitting in the compound getting raided, they were trying, the strategy of the U.S. military is to avoid making them aware that they're even in combat until it's too late. Do you see that? A good raid is when there's no shots fired. It's when they don't even know that they are under attack until it's too late for them to do anything about it. They wanted to withhold that information from their opponent for as long as possible because the most dangerous time in any conflict is when you don't know you when you're in it. And then walking to the target. The most dangerous time was that they might be in a conflict before they're ready to be in a conflict. They might be in an ambush. They might throw it open on them before they're ready to be in that conflict. And I thought, oh, how interesting as we think about spiritual warfare, that the most dangerous time of any conflict is when we're in one and we don't realize it. And this, I think, is what Paul is trying to open our eyes to in Ephesians chapter 6. And it's why he writes what he writes. At the end of this letter, he's written this letter to this church, not necessarily to Ephesus, but to the churches surrounding Ephesus, and it ended up camping out in the church of Ephesus. But to many churches, to many early churches, he writes a letter. He describes what salvation is. He says what we do because we're saved. How should we live and how should we live in the home and in the workplace and with our children? And then he finishes up the letter with a warning followed by an encouragement. And the warning has a lot to do with the point that we just made about being unaware of the conflicts that we're in. Look at what he says, beginning in verse 10. We're going to go 10 through 12 right now. Paul writes, finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God. We're going to talk about what that is in a second. That you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. This is such an important verse. Listen to this verse. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Paul is saying, listen, listen, listen, you need to know this. Listen, hey, pay attention. We are in a conflict. We are in a battle. To be born into the world is to be born into the midst of an eternal struggle of good versus evil over God versus Satan. To be born into the world is to be born into a conflict where there are elements warring against and for your very soul. So wake up. We're in a battle. And if the most dangerous point of any conflict is to be in it and not be aware that we are in it. Then what Paul is doing is he's grabbing the church in Ephesus and he's grabbing our attention 2,000 years later and he's going, hey, listen, you need to know. Everything's not okay right now. Everything's not safe right now. You are in a conflict. Whether you know it or not, whether you admit it or not, whether you feel it or not, you are in one. And we don't like to talk about this a lot. We don't like to think about this a lot. I certainly don't like to preach about it a lot. But if we believe that the Bible is true, then we have to believe this uncomfortable truth about our reality, that Satan is real and that he is against you. We don't like thinking about it. We don't like talking about it. No one comes to church going, you know what I hope Nate talks about? The devil. But here's the truth. Satan is real and he is against you. And I would add, he is smarter than you, he has more energy than you, and he is more passionate than you about his goal. And his goal is to hurt God any way he can by tearing people away from his eternal love. And then once you are signed up for his eternal love, once you have received salvation and you have God's love, then his goal is to tear you away and to ruin you from being effective at all at bringing other people into a knowledge of God. It's to make you so ineffective in your faith that you have no impact whatsoever in the kingdom. He is at war against you. This is why Peter says in his letter, 1 Peter 5, at the end, he writes a letter to the church as well. This is just a general epistle that floated around to all of the churches in the ancient world a few years after the death of Jesus. And he finishes his letter the same way. Verse 8 in chapter 5, be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. We've all watched those nature shows, right? You've seen the gazelles out on the Serengeti? They're just like chilling out, munching on grass or whatever it is. And there's a pride of lions in the bushes waiting for the one that they're going to devour. Those gazelles are in a conflict and they don't know it. And their adversary is prowling around waiting to find someone to devour. Incidentally, this is not the point of the sermon, but it's too important to pass up here. Who are the ones that he always gets? Who are the ones that the lions always get? The ones that wander away from the herd. Church, a small group, consistency, and a family of faith, it's important. The further away we wander, the more vulnerable we become. But I thought it was interesting that the two fathers of the early church, I mean the two pillars, the guys, if you were in the early church a couple years after Jesus passed away and then goes back up into heaven, If you're in the early church, you know that Peter's the guy. There's the apostles, but Peter is the leader. He is the leader of the church in Jerusalem. And if you go outside of Jerusalem to any of the churches, Paul is the guy. And both of these pillars of the church wrote a letter to the general churches. And at the end of both of their letters, they both said, wake up. We are in a conflict. We don't like to talk about it. We don't like to think about it. But we exist as physical people in a spiritual realm and there are spiritual forces that are against us. Satan is real and he is against you. And he is smarter than you and he is more dedicated than you. So make no mistake about it. We are in a conflict. If you don't think that you're in a conflict, and this is for Christians and non-Christians alike. If you don't think that you're in a conflict, try to choose purity in this world. Try to choose sexual purity in this world. And tell me that you don't every day feel forces pressing against that. If you don't think that you're in a conflict, try to raise a kid. For these boys that were up here, those of you who have kids who are grown, as you look at the Janczewskis who are up here with their two little boys and all the triumphs and all the trials that are in front of them, try to tell them that they're not in a conflict for the souls of their boys. Listen, when I talk about passages like this, when we encounter passages like this, there's kind of two ways to respond to them. If we believe in that fight or flight doctrine, some of us have in us fight. That when you start talking about conflict, you start talking about fight, you start talking about spiritual warfare. I open up a sermon with talking about special forces in Iraq. Some of us in the room are like, I'm in, let's go. What you got? Some of us like that stuff. There's others of us in the room who are a little bit more like my wife. She's sweet, man. Fighting, that's not her thing. Conflict, that's not how she does. I start talking about spiritual warfare, she's like, nah, you have fun with your warfare. But here's the thing. She's in just as much of a conflict as I am. This isn't just for a select few. Whether this passage speaks your language or it doesn't, whether you are fierce or whether you are timid, whether you fight or whether you would choose flight, wherever you are on any of the spectrums, be very clear, we exist in a conflict and Satan himself is warring against your marriage. He is warring against your children. He is warring against your friends. He is warring against your family. He is warring against the things that you love the most and his goal is to steal your life from you and to make you as ineffective as possible by catching you up and all the entrapments of the world so that you do nothing for the kingdom. If you hear nothing else this morning, please don't leave here. Wandering through the field, eating grass like a gazelle, unaware that you're in a conflict. As I thought about this passage as your pastor, I wondered, including me, how many times do we sit at home flicking through our phone while there is a night raid being planned against us? We are in a conflict. And because we are, Paul finishes the passage. What do we do? Because we're in a conflict, because it exists, because Satan is real and he is against us, because he's prowling about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, what do we do? Well, the rest of the passage gives us the answer. In verse 13, he starts it out. He says, therefore. Now, hopefully you've heard me say this before. A little bit of biblical interpretation. This is high-level graduate school stuff. Whenever you see a therefore in Scripture, you have to ask, what's it there for? I know, it's very technical. What did he just say that allows him to say what he's going to say? So what this therefore means is, because you're in a battle, here's what you need to do. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand firm, stand therefore. Having fastened on the belt of truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, He finishes by saying, praying at all times. So if we're in a battle for our marriages, for our families, for our children, for our friends, for our very souls, if we are in a battle, what do we do? We put on the whole armor of God. And I've seen a lot of people go through and break down each element. What's the belt of truth? And what's the helmet of salvation? And what's the shield of faith and the breastplate of righteousness? And we could do that, but I would just make two points about that. It's boring. And ultimately, it's not super helpful. What we need to know, those are the defensive elements of God's armor. And what we need to know about them is that the defensive elements, the armor that we put on to protect us from the onslaught of the devil is essentially salvation. It's the idea of clothing ourself in salvation. If you want to look back at each one of the elements, they're an element of salvation or something that comes to us as a result of salvation or something that is required so that we can receive salvation. But it's this idea of if we are going to stand firm, because we are in a conflict, what do we do? We clothe ourself in the salvation that God offers us, and we stand firm. I love at the beginning it says, when you have done everything you can to stand, stand therefore. Stay. And I've always pictured in my mind, I don't know how your mind works as I've thought about this passage, I've always pictured this weathered soldier as I think about a mature believer who just stands there with the shield of faith decked out in armor and the evil one is sending the flaming darts towards them and they just weather it. They're just a bulwark in the storm of conflict, and they will not back down, and they will not retreat, and they just stand there, and they take it. That's what I've always pictured. And then I talked to my buddy about this passage, and I said, when you read this passage as a soldier, what do you see? And he said, you know, it's interesting as I read it this week that the only thing I was really interested in was the weapon. He said, as a soldier, when he looks at this and it gets to the armor part, he's like, yeah, that's great, that's great. What's my weapon? What can I fight with? He said, in the special forces, they keep talking about building these like Iron Man suits that make you like impenetrable or whatever, like a juggernaut on the battlefield. And that nobody in special forces is really that interested in these because they don't care. That's not about defending ourselves. It's about what's my weapon and how do I attack the enemy? And he went through a couple of doctrines of attack of the United States military. And the commonality that they had is when you get in a conflict, the best defense is a good offense. When you get in a conflict, the thing you're trying to do as quickly as you can is attack, attack, attack. We do not stand there. They're not just standing there taking it, just weathering the storm of bullets. They attack as quickly and as forcefully as they can. So when he reads this, he wants to know, what's my weapon? How do I go on offense? How do I attack the person who's attacking me? I loved that. That changed my paradigm for me. Because so often I had this picture of the Christian life of somebody who just stands there on the hill, weathering the throes of the evil one, weathering the battle, just standing there as a bulwark and being defensive in this posture of, I will not move, waiting on Jesus. But that's not the picture that the word of God paints. And that's not the picture that my military friend has in his head because there's a weapon here with which we can attack and beat back the attacks of the evil one. It's similar to the wording that Jesus uses when he announces his church. When Peter says, you are Jesus, the son of the living God. And Peter says, yes, you are Peter. And on this rock, I will build my church. And we know that part, but what comes after that? And the gates of hell will not overcome it. The gates are not offensive, they are defensive. Jesus paints this picture of his church forcefully attacking the powers of evil. And so for me, it changed the way I think about what a successful soldier looks like. A successful soldier in this conflict is not one that just sits back and holds up the shield of faith and weathers the storm. It is one that presses forward and attacks. So he wanted to know, in this armor, what's my weapon? What do I get? Our weapon, according to the text, is God's word. The sword of the spirit, which is God's word, is what Paul says. Our weapon, what we use to beat back the attacks of evil against us and our families and our loved ones? Our weapon is God's word. And so to me, the question becomes, why is this the weapon? What's so effective about God's word? And so you can look at the claims that God's word makes about itself. In Hebrews, we're told that the word of God is living and active. It's sharper than any two-edged sword, that it penetrates soul and spirit, bone and marrow. Jesus tells us that God's word will not return null and void. There is this power and efficacy to it. But as I thought about it on a practical level, there's plenty of reasons why God's word is the most effective possible weapon against the schemes of the evil one. But there's two that I wanted to highlight this morning. The first is that God's word speaks eternal certainty, eternal truth into temporal uncertainty. God's word speaks eternal truth into temporal uncertainty. If there are forces working against us, then one of the things that they want to do is to shake our faith, is to make us feel like the world is spinning around and there's nothing that can be done about it. Everything's going to hell in a handbasket. This place is getting worse and worse. This is spiraling out of control. I don't know how this just this last week. Last Friday, we had our very first parent-teacher conference. Lily, our daughter, is going to turn four in January, and she's in preschool, and we had our very first teacher conference. Jen was very excited to go, and she said, I'm so nervous about what they're going to say about Lily. I'm like, she's three. I can say anything that matters. Like, it's whatever. And so she goes, and she's got this sweet teacher named Michelle. And Michelle has really, really short hair because we learned that Michelle is a cancer survivor, and now she's fighting cancer again. And so when Jen went, she shared with Michelle that she was about to run home. Michelle says, oh, why are you doing that? And she said, well, my dad has cancer and he's going to get a scan and I want to be home for that. And so then Michelle shared her story. And as Michelle shared her story and empathized with Jen and understood in this unique way what her family is going through, they began to cry together. And into those tears, Michelle began to share verses off the top of her head that had helped her in her journey and that strengthened Jen in that moment. She spoke eternal truth into temporary uncertainty. And then, as they began to talk about Lily, which it turns out that Lily excels at most things that preschoolers should excel at. She has a hard time holding scissors. So if you see her trying to hold scissors, please don't make any jokes. She's very sensitive. But then they started talking about Lily and all the things where she, all the ways that she's good and all the ways where she can grow. And for everyone, Jen told me as she was recounting the conversation to me, she said, Nate, for every one of these, Michelle, she had a passage to go with it. And she wasn't looking at notes. She was just speaking truth out of God's word over Lily and what was going on. She just breathed scripture. She said, Nate, I want to be like that. And as a dad and a husband, I'll try to keep it together and not get choked up. I am so grateful that there is a woman who is in the conflict, who has sharpened her sword, and who is swinging it on my family's behalf. She's speaking truth into my wife and strengthening her against the enemy. She's speaking truth over my daughter and protecting her against the onslaughts there. Because at some point in her life, she has dedicated herself to sharpening her sword so that it's ready for the battle. At one point or another, she realized that her battle is not against flesh and blood. It's against the spiritual forces in the heavenly places that would seek to tear us away from our God. And so she's awake, and she's standing firm, and she's swinging her sword in that instance for my family. And I'm grateful for that. That's why it's the best weapon. It's also the best weapon. We see this in the life of Christ. I'm gonna get my act together now. It's the best weapon because it overpowers the strength of temptation. I believe that there is something supernaturally powerful. I think that there is something supernatural that happens when we speak God's word into temptation. When we face these moments of trial where we want to go one direction and we can call up a portion of scripture that encourages us to go in the other direction. Jesus exhibited this in his 40 days of fasting at the beginning of his ministry. He fasted for 40 days in the desert. At the end of those 40 days, Satan, the adversary, appeared to him and tempted him in three different ways. And all three times, based on my old understanding of the passage in Ephesians, I would expect Jesus to clothe himself in his own righteousness and just stand there and take the temptation as the onslaught comes. But that's not what he does. He returns, he attacks with the sword of the spirit with God's word in all three instances. Rather than standing there and taking it and weathering it, he returns fire with the word of God that overpowers the strength of that temptation, and the enemy goes away. He quotes scripture to temptation. I've seen this in my own life. I don't very often like to set up myself as the example, but I saw this in my life when I was going through memorizing Romans chapter 8. A couple years ago, I just decided that I wanted to memorize Romans chapter eight. And so by God's grace, I was successful at doing that. But when you commit yourself to memorizing an entire chapter of God's word, it runs in your head all the time, whether you want it there or not. The way that I did it is I used my car rides. I had YouVersion up on my phone and and then at stoplights, I would read as much of the passage that I could, and then in between stoplights, I would try to say it back to myself. So it was playing all the time in my head. And during that season of life, I can't tell you how many times something came up, and I went, that reminds me of verse 13. That reminds me of verse 27. That reminds me of verse 39. I can't tell you how many times it came up where that was all of a sudden relevant again to what I was dealing with in life. I can't tell you how many times I was able to speak the truth of that passage against temptation so that I was no longer interested. And with God's word rolling in your head and in your heart all the time, you become far less easy to tempt. That's why we're told to hide God's word in our heart that we might not sin against God. And I love this truth because you've heard me many times as your pastor say that the most important habit any of us can develop in life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer. And it is just reinforced all the more this week as I encounter this text. The most important habit we can have is to spend up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer, clothe ourself in our salvation, ground ourself in our salvation, focus on God in prayer, and sharpen your sword. Because you don't know when you're going to have to swing it. You don't know what conflict is coming. There's no announcement about, hey, there's going to be a temptation today. Hey, you and your wife are going to get into a fight today. Hey, your kid's going to deal with something tough today. Hey, you're going to get a really hard phone call today. We don't get warnings about those. And we don't know when the onslaught's coming, but there is a night raid being planned. So we sharpen our sword. So I want to finish with the encouragement today. Threefold. Wake up. We're in a conflict. It is happening all around us, whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we're even comfortable with it or not, it's happening. Stand firm. Persevere. Why do you think at every turn in scripture that the encouragement of the apostles is to persevere, persevere, persevere, persevere? Why do you think that they hold up perseverance as this great thing to be attained? Why do you think that when Paul is ready to end his life, he says, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith. Why do you think we are told to run the race to win it? Why do you think it says, once you have done everything you can to stand, then stand some more. Stand firm. Persevere in your faith. Life is long. Cling to your salvation. And then sharpen your sword. Be a student of this word. Swing it for the people in your life. Know it well to keep yourself clean. And then go fight for others as we advance as God's army. And here's the promise. Here's what I love. This is not fatalistic at all. We don't just stand there and weather it. We push forward and we fight. And if we do this faithfully, if we stand firm, if we wake up and we stand firm and we sharpen our sword and we swing it when life requires it of us, we will win this battle one day because in Revelation chapter 19, Jesus is coming back. And when he comes back, he's not coming as a lamb of God. He's coming as a lion of Judah and he's coming to wreck shop and he's gonna win this conflict. And so we fight until he gets here. Wake up, stand firm, sharpen your sword. Let's pray. Father, you're a good God. You love us so much. God, I pray that we would feel you empowering us. I pray that we would allow you to wake us up to the reality of what's happening around us. Give us the strength to persevere, to stand firm, to cling to our faith and our salvation. Give us the discipline to sharpen our sword. Help us be ready to swing it when we need to. God, I just pray over all the conflicts and all the battles and all the fights that are going on in this room, all the raids being planned and all the places that Satan is prowling. God, I pray that you would help the people in this room fight, that we would fight for the people around us, that we would feel the strength of your salvation and the joy of your spirit.

Well, good morning. It's good to be up here again. I usually start with my name is Nate, but I think we covered that earlier in the announcement, so I'm just going to jump right into things. This week, I had the opportunity to do two things that I think are kind of a special part of the experience of being a pastor. On Tuesday, I got to go visit a couple in the hospital who goes to the church who just had their new baby, Hudson Harper, the grandson of John Susan Turnburg and then the son of Lauren Harper and Brandon Harper. And it was a sweet, sweet thing to go there and to visit with them and to see this tiny little baby that could barely open his eyes and have the opportunity to talk to them and pray with them. And you kind of get invited into these special spaces that you might not always get to experience. I got invited into this hospital room with them, and it was a really great thing. And then Friday, I got to do a wedding for a couple. They were a sweet couple. He was 34. She was 31. This is their first marriage. They waited for each other. They found each other. They dated for two years. And I got to stand there and do their wedding and be a part of that. And that was a neat experience. And then as we're doing the vows, dude can barely choke through them. Like he is so choked up. He's so moved with love for this woman that he is going to marry. It was a really, really sweet moment. It really was. And what strikes me about those moments is they're both so very full of hope, right? They're both so very full of hopes and dreams. If you know, if you've had a kid, then you know what it is to hold that kid and realize, oh my goodness, all the things you hope for them, all the things that you want for them, all the things that you hope are true of them in their adolescence and into adulthood. And if you know Jesus and you believe in prayer, then you pray for them, you hope for them, you dream about them. And when you get married and you stand at the altar and you look at the person that you're giving your life to, you have hopes and dreams about that marriage as well. You have things that you want to be true, stories that you hope God writes in your life. And those are two really hopeful moments. And they remind me that we all have hopes and dreams. You carried hopes and dreams into this room. We all have things that we want. We all have things that we hope are true one day. That's how we are wired. And sometimes life changes those hopes and dreams. If you go back to when you had a kid and then you look at him now, you're like, that's not what I was hoping for. God adjusts those. Sometimes marriage doesn't go the way that we hoped that it would go. But we change them. We augment them. We still have these hopes and we still have these dreams. We have things that we want for ourselves. And it makes me wonder, if we have hopes and dreams for our children, and we believe that God is our Father in heaven, then he has hopes and dreams for us. And I wonder what those are. I wonder what God hopes for us. I wonder what God's will is for us. I wonder what he wants for each of his children. I wonder what he wants for his church. I wonder what he wants for you. I wonder what he wants for the people that you love the most. And I think that we actually arrive in Ephesians chapter three, as we go through the book of Ephesians in our series, I think we actually arrive at a place where we see God's hopes and dreams for us. I think they're articulated through the person of Paul in this prayer. We're going to be looking at Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 through 19. In that span of verses, I tweeted out or sent out on social media this week that this is my favorite passage in the Bible. Aaron, our children's pastor, was laughing at me because apparently I have a lot of favorites, but this is like my favorite favorite, okay? I love this prayer. It's a prayer that he prays to the churches surrounding the ancient city of Ephesus. He prays this prayer, a very similar prayer, over the church in Colossae, in the book of Colossians. We find it there. We find it in the book of Philippians that he prays over the church in Philippi. This prayer has made such an impact on me and the way that I think about things and the way that I hope for the people that God entrusts to me that the very first sermon that I was able to choose when I came to grace, I came to grace in April of 2017. And the first two Sundays were Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. And so those had already kind of been determined what was going to be preached that day. But the first passage that I got to choose to preach to my new church was Ephesians 3, verses 14 through 19. When I go and I visit a kid in the hospital that's born, I pray the ethic or the ethos of this verse over them. The takeaway from this prayer, I pray over them. When I pray for Lily, my own daughter, every night, the first prayer I prayed for her was this. The first thing I pray, the thing I pray for her every night, I try to, is this, that she would know God. And when I pray for the marriages that I do, I pray that they would know God. And that's what we see in this prayer. But I don't just expect you to care about this prayer because I do. I don't just expect you to think it's a big deal because I think it's a big deal. And I don't just expect you to accept that these are God's hopes and dreams for you without a little bit of work or a little bit of background because I say they're a big deal. And I think that fundamental to this prayer is really understanding Paul. I think to appreciate the prayer, we have to appreciate the person who prayed it. Now, if I had made these notes later in the week when I was really on my game, I would have said to appreciate the prayer, you have to appreciate the prayer. Yeah, that's better. But this is fine. You have to appreciate the person who prayed the prayer. So who is the person of Paul? I feel like in church we talk about Paul. You've heard me say Paul before, and you know that you're supposed to acknowledge that he's a big deal. But I wonder if sometimes we don't know bits and pieces of who he is, and we don't really know the whole person of Paul. Maybe Paul to you is kind of like Bruce Springsteen to me. I have to confess to you, I don't really know anything that he sang. I don't, I'm sorry. I grew up in a cruel regime that didn't allow me to listen to secular music. And so the 70s and the 80s are totally lost on me until I could start sneaking like Offspring and Dave Matthews in the 90s. Like that's when I started listening to music. Before that, it was just just the Bill Gaither vocal band, which is awesome. I mean, don't hate on them. Some of you are not laughing. You're like, I don't get this. Don't. Google it. You're going to have a great afternoon. But like, I don't know who Bruce, I don't know what he's saying. I'm pretty sure he's called the boss. I think he's from New Jersey. I don't know. You don't have to tell me. I don't really care. And like, this, I was trying to tell the staff, like what songs did he sing? And my first two guesses were Born to Be Wild. No. And Summer of 69. No, that's not true. I think Born in the USA. Is that one? That's literally all I know. They taught me that this week. That's all I know. But my whole life, people will mention Bruce Springsteen. I'm like, yeah, the boss. He's the man. I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know anything about him. I just fake it because by this time it's too late to ask any questions, right? I think sometimes we do that with Paul. We mention him in church. Last week you heard me say that he has these things called epistles. That sounds very fancy. Letters that he wrote to the churches. We know that he went around planting churches. We know things about Paul, but I wonder if we really know this person and who he is. Maybe some of you do. Maybe some of you know the deep cuts, like you know the bootlegs, like you know that there's a third Corinthians floating around somewhere out there that we haven't read before. That's actually a true thing. That's a thing that exists. Maybe you know that. Maybe you don't, but I thought we could kind of piece together our knowledge of Paul so we can really appreciate the person that prays this prayer over the church in Ephesus and ultimately over us. Paul was born, Saul, in a city called Tarsus. And he grew up as a Jew's Jew, man. He came up, he was in training, he had just become a Pharisee. And one thing to know about Jerusalem and Israel at the time is that every civilization has a celebrity culture. Every civilization has people that they look at and go, those are the ones that we want to be like. And in Israel, it was the religious leaders. It was the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And so to grow up becoming a Pharisee was to be a part of the celebrity culture of Israel. It was to be young and up and coming. It was to be known. And he was the cream of the crop. He was at the top of the heap. He was the guy. He was the guy with all the potential in Israel. He was a Jew's Jew. And then when Jesus was crucified and his followers, known as simply the way, began to multiply, he said, this is a threat to Judaism, to what I believe in. It's my job to stamp it out. So he took it on his own shoulders to stamp out this young religion of Christianity. And he began to persecute the Christians in Jerusalem. And then he got a special order to go to the next nation over to a city called Damascus and stamp out the Christian movement going on there. And on the way to Damascus, Jesus appears to him and he says, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? He blinds him and he sends him to a place. He says, you stay here, someone's going to come to you. And then God goes to Ananias, this great prophet that lives. And he says, I want you to go to Saul, and I want you to heal him of the blindness that I'm struck him with. And Ananias says, I don't want to do that. If I go to see Saul, I'm going to get killed. No way. You can find some other sucker. And God says what I think is maybe one of the most ominous lines in the New Testament. Saul is my chosen instrument to reach the Gentiles. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. For those of you who think that the Christian life, that once I become a Christian, there's no more suffering and God fixes everything that hurts me, I will show you how much he must suffer for my name. That's not in the Bible, this idea that we don't experience hardship once we know Jesus. The one who followed him maybe the best had some of the hardest trials. So Ananias goes to Saul, now named Paul, and he takes the scales off of his eyes. Paul is infused with his purpose. He is the chosen instrument to reach the Gentiles, okay? Gentile is anybody who's not a Jew. So that's almost everybody in this room. And Paul was the guy that God took his infant church that was birthed in Jerusalem, that had a couple thousand followers in this one city, and he handed, I think, this infant church to Paul, and he said, here, I need you to bring this to adolescence. He entrusted it to him. Carry my word, carry the mystery of the gospel, the thing that happened here with Jesus when he died on the cross. Take that to the other church, to the other cities surrounding us in Asia Minor and spread the word of this church. And Paul did his job well because here we are, another continent 2,000 years later. He went off into the wilderness for a number of years. When he felt like he was ready, he presented himself to the council, to the church council in Jerusalem, populated by the disciples and Jesus' brother, James. And he said, hey, I think I'm ready to do my job. I think I'm ready to go tell the Gentiles about this Jesus. Can I go? And they said, yeah, you have our blessing. So he went for the rest of his life on four missionary journeys. Some scholars say it was three journeys. some say four. The reason there's a debate is that his last journey, he was arrested and then put on a ship and taken to Rome. On his way to Rome, they shipwrecked on this island of Malta, and then eventually they got to Rome. And the whole time, Paul, because he's Paul, was sharing his faith and inspiring churches and writing letters. So some consider that his fourth missionary journey. The important thing to know is for his entire life, he traveled around and he planted churches and he inspired people and he brought people to the gospel. He had what was called a traveling seminary. It wasn't called that then, but we call it that now. He always had people who were younger than him, men and women that he was training up so that they could lead churches too. Timothy is his most famous disciple. He actually, the books of 1 and 2 Timothy were written letters from Paul to Timothy when he made Timothy the pastor in Ephesians. He sent Timothy to Ephesus and he said, that's going to be your church now. Here's some letters to guide you as you lead them. Paul was a great man. He is the most influential Christian to ever live. Paul literally said, and he meant it, to live as Christ and to die as gain. He wanted to be with God so badly that he considered it a good thing if he were gonna die. But he understood that to be here was to serve God, to live as Christ and to die as gain. He wanted death, not in a morose way, not in a suicidal way, not in a depressed way, but in a way that he said his picture of what eternity was was so great that he wanted that more than whatever this life had to offer. I spent a lot of time over the years, I haven't done it lately as much to my detriment, but for a while I was reading a lot of biographies. I love reading biographies about people that have done incredible things, men and women that have impacted history through the years. And whenever I read these biographies about good and bad people, people that did great things, people that did terrible things, I try to look for the commonalities. What is it about these people that make them great? What do they have in common through the years, whether it's Genghis Khan or whether it's George Washington or Steve Jobs? What do they have in common that helped them do these great things? And the one thing that I found in the biographies that I've read is that the thing that these great people have in common is this remarkable singularity of focus. They have this ability in their life to be laser focused on this thing that they think is so important. Above and beyond everything else, often to the detriment of other things that most normal people prioritize. A lot of times what they did, the great thing that they do, costs them all kinds of things in their personal lives. But they have the singularity of focus. And as I study Paul, without a doubt, he has the singularity of focus on God's church. He will not be distracted. All he ever cares about is building God's church and the people in God's church. And Paul had hopes and dreams for you too. He had a desire for you. And he had a desire for grace, just like he had a desire for the church in Ephesus. And if we wanna know what Paul prioritized, I think you can look at his prayers. This prayer is important because it reveals what Paul most values. The reason this passage is important is because it's revelatory to us. It tells us what Paul most values. If you were to go to Paul and you were to say, what's the, to you, if you could only ask for one thing for a church, what would it be? If we went to him and we said, if you could, Paul, if you could only pray one thing over grace, what would it be? I think it would be this. If you said, Paul, what, if you could only pray one thing over my marriage, over my kid, over me, over the people that I love, what would it be? I think it would be this passage. I really, truly do. And I think what's said in this prayer reveals his priorities for us. So let's look at what Paul prays over the churches around Ephesus, and I think over the New Testament church of which we are a part. He says this, That's Paul's prayer for you. If you were to say, Paul, what do you want from me and my family? This is it. This is what he wants. And I think it's worth going through sentence by sentence and making sure we really understand what it is that Paul's asking for us here. So if you look at verses 14, and I've actually asked Lynn running our slides today to just leave it up on the screen so that we can look at it together. If you look at verses 14 and 15, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family on heaven and on earth is named. Paul is saying, listen, Ephesus, I want you to know, church, I want you to know, I pray for you. I pray for you. And when I do, here's what I pray. Now, it's interesting to note he gets on his knees. It's a posture of submission. God, your will be done, not mine. It's acknowledging that God is Lord over the whole earth, that all the churches are his. But really, the heart of this is Ephesus, church, I pray for you regularly. And when I do, let me tell you what I pray for. We see in 16, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being. And there's a purpose to that prayer that he wants to be strengthened you. He wants you to be strengthened in your inner being by his spirit so that there's a purpose to that prayer. Okay. That's not just one thing that he wants. He wants that for you because it leads to something else. And the thing that it leads to is so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, okay? Those first two things there, that you would be strengthened with power in your inner being by his spirit so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That's salvation. That's what he's talking about. To understand what it means to become a Christian is for the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to spiritual truths that you had not yet seen. If you're a believer, then what's happened in your life is at some point or another, your eyes were opened and you realized, oh my goodness, because of choices I've made, I'm at odds with my creator. I have no way to repair my relationship with my creator, and I need something, some supernatural action so that I can be reunited with my creator. And then you realize through the Holy Spirit, because he's working in your heart and in your mind, that that's Jesus. The Holy Spirit's first work in your life is to turn you on to your need for a Savior, and then to open up the doors of your heart so that Christ can take residence in your heart, that Christ would dwell in your hearts through faith. This is a salvation experience. The very first thing that Paul prays for all of us is that we would be Christians, that we would be saved. If you're here this morning and you're not a part of a church and you're not a part of the church because you're not yet a believer, you just came with somebody or you wandered in, we are so glad that you are here. And I want you to know that Paul prays for you. He prays for you that you would become a believer. And not just mental ascent, not just, yeah, I think so. But that you would be strengthened in your inner being. And that phrasing, that denotes your heart, your guts, your core, and your bones down to the fiber of who you are. Be strengthened with the Spirit, I think, so that you won't doubt. So that you'll know that you know that you know that Christ has you. That he will take up residence in your heart, and that you know that you are a believer, that you will be strengthened to your core and have this confidence in knowing that God has you. He prays that for you. But he doesn't stop there. He doesn't just want you to be a believer. He doesn't just want you to know Christ and for Christ to take residence in your heart. But the result of that, and I think this is a beautiful thing, it says that Christ would dwell in your hearts in faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love. I love that phrase. When we're confident in the work that the Holy Spirit has done, we've been strengthened in our core. When Christ has taken up residence in our heart, the result of this, of knowing that we are saved, is that we are rooted and grounded in love. And as I thought about this phrase, I thought, man, this is a really appropriate phrase for 2019. Because we are a people and we are a culture that is becoming more and more aware of the idea of health. All of us, we express it in different ways. Some of us are old school tough guys and we would never really admit this. We just have other ways of saying it, but it's the same thing. We want to be mentally healthy. We want to be physically healthy. We want to be spiritually healthy. We want to be emotionally healthy. We want to be healthy people. Now, some of you, the best way that you have to be emotionally healthy is just to convince yourself that you don't have any of those and then go through life, okay? So that's how some of you have achieved emotional health. If it's working for you, I don't want to mess you up, but we all seek it. We even have little phrases that kind of tip us off and remind us that not everyone's healthy and that's why life happens this way sometimes. Sometimes somebody will say something to hurt your feelings and you'll go to someone who loves you and you'll say, man, so-and-so said this and gosh, it really bothered me. And they'll remind you that, you know what? Sometimes hurt people hurt people. You ever heard that? Sometimes hurt people hurt people. And that's true. Sometimes people who are unhealthy get their unhealth on you by saying regrettable things. Sometimes we see behaviors in others that are gross to us. Just last night, I wasn't gonna use this, but I am now. This will be fun. Jen and I got to go out on a date. It was nice. We went to Second Empire. It was a good restaurant. There's a six-top next to us, and there was a guy there who his voice was loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear all night. He was an insufferable cuss words. And he went on and on about how, I'm not kidding you. He was like in his fifties. We learned how much he could bench. We learned what kind of car he drive. We learned what he did for a living. We learned the people that he knew. We learned the resumes of everybody at the table. It was, he almost ruined our dinner. If my date had to been so pretty, it would have been a waste of a night. Let's pray. But here's the truth. That guy, he's pretty insufferable. He was a me monster. He needed people to like him. He's just not healthy. He hasn't found his true value and his true worth. So he wants you to know those things about him so that you go, you're something. And if you're smart, if you're empathetic, when you're around people like that, and I didn't do it last night because I was neither smart nor empathetic, but right here I can figure it out. You offer those people grace and you go, they're not healthy. They haven't yet found their worth, their sense of being and belonging. And what this verse is telling you is, once the Spirit has moved in your life and strengthened you, once Christ has taken up residence in your heart, man, you are loved by your creator who sent his son to die for you. And you have all the sense of worth and value that you'll ever need if you'll trust it. He gives you your identity. He imbues you with purpose. He tells you every day that he loves you and that you're enough. And if we believe that, if we hear it, and if we walk in it, then we can be rooted and grounded in love. We can be spiritually and emotionally healthy people, and then out of that help, love others. That's the picture of what it is to be a believer, is to be somebody who's healthy enough to know, I'm loved. I don't need affection from other people. I'm affirmed, I don't need other people to tell me I'm special because God does. And then in that freedom and in that confidence, move and love other people. That's a picture of what health is. And I think so often our lives are not rooted and grounded in love. They're rooted and grounded in a myopia or in a narcissism. They're rooted and grounded in anxiety or in things that we can't control. They're rooted and grounded and characterized by a depression or by places where we're not trusting. They're rooted and grounded in ambition and greed and self-consumption. And Paul's prayer is that we would be people who are healthy, who know Christ, who are rooted and grounded in love. Once we are rooted and grounded the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. Then he prays, I want you to go deeper into this love of Jesus. I don't want him to just take up residence in your heart. I don't want you to just express his love to other people. I want you to go deeper and deeper into this love that Jesus has for you. I kind of think about it like the ocean. If you go to the ocean and you walk up to it to your knees just before your shorts get wet, you can technically say that you've experienced the ocean. But have you experienced the depths of the ocean? You can walk out there until the waves are breaking over your head and you can feel it kind of swirling you around a little bit. You can feel the power of the ocean. Have you experienced the depths of the world's oceans? When I go to the ocean, what I like to do, and I know this is a terrible choice, and one day I'm just not going to come back, and that's how it goes. I swim out until I get scared. Every time I go to the ocean, I do it. I like to do it. I don't know what's wrong with me. I swim until I get scared. And then I turn around and swim back. Now, I never get scared because, oh my gosh, I'm so far out. I'm not going to have the energy to get back. I become acutely aware that I'm at shark depth and that they've seen me. And I cannot, as much as I try to get that thought out of my head and they're not interested in me, there's other things to eat. they don't want me. As much as I try to reason with myself, I just, there's sharks here, man, and I swim back. But even swimming out as far as I can until I get scared, have I experienced the depths of the ocean? If you've been on a cruise ship and you've had the opportunity to look in every direction and see nothing but the ocean. If you are a marine biologist, a maritime explorer, and you get in a submarine and you go to the bottom of the Mariana Trench seven miles down in the Pacific Ocean, have you experienced all that there is to experience in the ocean? No. You can devote your life to exploring it and you will only ever scratch the surface of what it has to offer. This is the love of Christ. Just because we've been up to our waist, just because it swept over us and we felt the power of it a couple times, just because we were able to venture out far enough so that we got scared does not mean that we have experienced all that the love of Christ has to offer. And Paul's prayer is that your life would be this experience of an ever-deepening understanding of the love that God has for you, understanding that until we get to eternity, we will only ever scratch the surface. You could devote your life to understanding the love that Jesus has for you, and we still won't comprehend it. And then finally, he says, for all of this, that you would be filled with all the fullness of God. Thanksgiving's coming up around the corner. And when it does, we go to Dothan, Alabama, and we have the best meal of the year. It's phenomenal. And about 10 to 15 minutes before that meal, every year, what do I start doing? I start going through the kitchen. There's the turkey, and I pick up a little piece of that turkey and have some turkey. There's a deviled egg. I'm going to sneak like six of those, and I'll have a couple of dev you know? I start to kind of pick at the food. But I'm not full yet. Because what's going to happen is we're going to pray, and everybody's going to get a plate, and they're going to go. And I'm always going to go and wait and let everybody else go first because I don't want to have to worry about portion control when I get there. And when I get up to that food, I'm even thinking this year, I'm going to go to Walmart and buy some of those khakis with like the elastic waistband here. So I got some Thanksgiving pants, you know. I'm going to make some irresponsible choices at Thanksgiving. I'm going to have a big old food baby. And I'm not going to stop until I get the meat sweats, right? That's what America does, man. Yeah. That is full. That's full. When we taste on Sunday morning and we get another taste at small group, we get another taste when we get up in the morning, we get another little taste when we listen to something in the car. Let us not be satisfied with that. Let us be filled with all the fullness of God. That we would know him. And that's the heart of the prayer. All of this, if you had to sum it up, what does Paul pray for us? If you had to sum it up in one sentence, what does Paul want for us more than anything? That you would know God. That you would know Jesus. That you would be filled with the fullness of him. That you would have an inkling of the height and the breadth and the depth of his love for you. That you would be strengthened with power in your inner being. That you would be healthy from that health that you would love. That you would be overwhelmed by God and be full of him every day. That's the number one thing that he prays for you. I think that's remarkable. I think it's remarkable, particularly when you think about the things that he didn't pray. If you look at these churches, these churches in the ancient world, life expectancy was like, what, 40, 45? I can't back that up with paperwork, but I feel pretty confident with that guess. Sickness was very much a part of these churches. Loss was a part of the lives of all the people in these churches. Yet Paul does not pray for health. He does not pray in this prayer. He does in other places, but in this prayer, if he can only pray one thing, he doesn't pray for healing or spiritual health or physical health rather. He doesn't pray, even though he planted this church, he wants it to grow. He wants to see them add numbers day by day. He wants to see this church flourish and be bigger in five years than it is this year. He wants that for this church. He doesn't pray it. He doesn't pray, may your ministry be successful. May God give you favor in your community. He doesn't pray for prosperity or wealth or success or health. He prays that they would know God. Now, does Paul want all of those things? Sure, absolutely he does. And at other places in the Bible, he prays for some of those things. But what's the first thing that he wants? That they would know God. It makes sense to me that he doesn't pray for church growth. Because if your church is filled with people who have mined the depths of the love of Christ, who are filled with all the fullness of God. You don't think that church brings in other people? You don't think that church is a powerful force in the community in which it sits? You don't think that person who is filled in that way isn't an influencer at their place of work? He doesn't have to pray those other things. He prays for the fundamental thing. He doesn't pray for health. I think he doesn't pray for health because he doesn't want to be a party to trying to pray away the very situation that is going to bring about the answer to this prayer, which is to make you closer to God. He doesn't pray for prosperity because he doesn't want to be a party to trying to pray away the very struggle that's going to bring you closer to God. And earlier I said that Paul's prayer reveals what he most values. Our prayers reveal our priorities. And if our prayers reveal what we most value, what do your prayers reveal about you? And the times that you pray, for some of us, it's every day. For some of us, it's for our meals. For others, it's when we're at Bible study and someone asks us to pray. We go, well, here we go. For others, it's rarely. It's in dire situations. But when you pray, what do you pray? When you go to God and you ask for something, what's the first thing you ask for? What have you prioritized above everything else? Is it situational? Or does it transcend that? I think the first thing that we should pray in every situation based on this prayer is, Father, let what's happening now conspire in some way to bring people closer to you. When we get the diagnosis, I think first we pray, God, we don't understand this. We hate this. This breaks our heart. Let it conspire to bring people closer to you. And then we go, and if it's still your will, God, could you please get rid of this because this stinks. When we find ourselves between jobs or between purposes, our first prayer should be, God, in this time, when I try to figure out what's next, I pray that the events of this time would conspire to bring me and those around me closer to you. And then the next thing. When something happens in the life of our child, God, I pray that whatever's going on right now, even though I don't understand it, will it please conspire to bring them to a place where they know you better? Will that please be the result of this? And then, Father, do these things. The question I want to ask you is, how should Paul's prayer shape our prayers? How should what he prays for shape what we pray for? How should what he hopes for shape what we hope for? What are your wildest dreams for your kids? Do they start with that they would simply know God? I pray for Lily. I pray that she'd marry a nice man that loves the Lord, that takes care of her, that loves her better than I ever could. I pray that she knows God better than I ever do. But the first thing I pray for her above anything else, any of her character traits, where she goes and what she does, the first thing I pray for her every night is she would know God. When we pray for ourselves and we pray for others, what do we pray for them? When we respond to tragedy, what do we pray in the face of that tragedy? When we respond to triumph, this is where we need to be the most careful. Everything's going great. What do we pray in the face of that triumph? Because we all have hopes and dreams and things that we want in life. But God has those for us too. And I don't know about you, but I want my hopes and dreams to align with his. I want our hopes and dreams as a church to align with what God wants for us. I want us to be people who more than anything else want us and those we love to know God. Let's pray. Father, we love you. You pursue us with a reckless love. You fill us with that love. You offer it to us freely. And God, you call us to it. I pray that we would hear that call, that we would feel it, that we would give into it. Lord, I pray over grace that we would be people who are strengthened in our inner being through your spirit, that Christ would dwell in our hearts through faith, that we would be healthy people who are rooted and grounded, God. And because of that, because of that health, because we know your love so much, that we would mind the depths of the love of Christ that he has for us, that we would know with all the saints exactly what that is, and that we would be filled with all of your fullness, Father. It's in your son's name we ask. Amen.

I told Steve this week I wanted the full dance party intro for the sermon, so we are in a good spot. Speaking of being in good spots, before I just launch into the sermon, I just kind of felt compelled to say this. I think one of the things about church that a lot of us would agree that's tough sometimes is that when you show up, you kind of smile and people say, how you doing? And you say, good. And sometimes we mean it and sometimes we don't. And so sometimes church feels like a place where it's not okay to not be okay. And so I just wanted to tell you as your pastor, there's nothing going on with me. It's just, I feel like I need a vacation for about three weeks. Jen and Lily are sick. They're at home. I kind of feel like the weather does today. Just a little tired, just a little run down. I was praying that God would give me energy for this morning that I don't have. And so like, I'm just telling you that I've had better days. There's nothing wrong with Nate. I just would rather be at home in sweatpants right now. I'm being totally honest with you. So if you're there too, and it was a struggle to get here this morning, I just want you to know that I'm with you. And if you're listening online or watching online because you stayed in those sweatpants, I'm jealous. So here's what I want to do. I was reminded as we were singing, and I heard your voices singing out. It was one of my favorite things to do is listening to you guys, my church, sing to God. I was reminded that we're a group of people, mostly care about our spiritual health and are here for what the Lord might have to say to us this morning. That's why we've gathered. So let's pray that that would be good, and then I'll launch into the stuff that I have prepared for you. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for getting us out of bed. Lord, for those who didn't get out of bed this morning but are catching up later, thank you for that time of rest for them that need it so much. God, we just pray that you would tune us into your word and your will. We pray that you would give us energy that we might lack. We pray that you would give us the ability to tune out things that may be distracting right now, and that for a little while this morning, we would hear from you. It's in your son's name we ask. Amen. Okay. I don't normally do this, but I want you to raise your hand. Raise your hand, and I'm not going to ask you to quote it, although that would be super fun. Raise your hand if you think you know what the verse Jeremiah 29 11 says. If you think you know that, okay? It's so funny from my perspective. There's a bunch of people doing this, right? And nobody doing this. That's fine. That's fine. That's a pretty well-known verse, right? It's from the Old Testament, the book of Jeremiah. It says, for I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. Actually, it says declares. It's a big deal. I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. And we like to glom onto that verse. We like to claim that verse. We like to go, oh gosh, it's so good to know that my God has a plan for me. And that's for the most part fun. But that verse is not for you. That verse is one of, I think, the most misapplied verses in Scripture, and it's one of the most misapplied verses in church. We look at that, for I know the plans God has for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you, not to harm you. Plans to give you hope in the future. And we go, oh, God has a plan for me. This is great. Except that that's not what that verse means. With that verse, who Jeremiah is talking to is the nation of Israel. And they're in slavery. They're cast out. And they don't feel like their God's looking out for them anymore. And he says to them, listen, I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. I'm going to bring you out of this and into a time of prospering again. It's a promise to the nation of Israel. And really it has, it's multi-layers to this promise, but it's really a messianic promise. One day I'm going to send my son Jesus and he's going to rescue everyone back to me. And then there's going to be a new heaven and a new earth, and one day I'm going to prosper you. I'm not going to harm you. That's what that verse means. It doesn't mean, Harris is sitting in the front row, okay? Harris is my buddy. It does not mean that God has plans for you, Harris, to prosper you and not to harm you. It does not mean that. That's a promise to the nation of Israel. And if I'm breaking your heart right now, because you love that verse and it brings you comfort, I don't want to rob that comfort of you. Is it revelatory of God's character? Yes. Do I think that God has a plan for you? Yes, I do. But what I want to do this morning is give you a better verse than that to show you that he has a plan. And I want to offer you some sympathy because I think that we glom onto that verse. We grab that verse and we go, yes, this is good. This brings me peace and joy. I think it's such a well-known verse because we want to know that God has a plan for us. We want to know that in the midst of life, in the midst of all the chaos, in the midst of all the things that we can't control, that somehow, somewhere, there is a divine God who is orchestrating all of these situations and that they will work out. We need to know. We need the peace of knowing that everything's not just happening at random, that someone is orchestrating all of these events. We need that peace. And so we grab that verse and we go, yes, God has a plan for me. This is great news. And people have done this for all of history. This is a question that we've asked for all of history. Why am I here and what am I here for? How did I get here and what am I supposed to do when I get here? As a matter of fact, if you remember freshman philosophy in college, one of the things you learn is that all of philosophy boils down to those three questions of origin, purpose, and destiny. How did I get here? What am I supposed to do? And where am I going? And so it's natural if you're a believer and you've been exposed to scripture that you would see a verse like that put up on a wall somewhere or included in a devotional somewhere and that you would attach onto it and go, yes, this is great. God has a plan for me because this answers some of the basic questions of human existence. How did I get here? And what am I here for? That's why I think the book of Ephesians is so good for us to study right now. Because the whole purpose of Ephesians is to tell us our identity and our purpose. Paul wrote the book of Ephesians, and the purpose of Ephesians, the overarching purpose, based on the research that I did and the guides that I read, is to give us our identity and our purpose. It's to answer those questions for you. It's to begin to answer the question, God, do you really have a plan for me? Is there really someone to make sense of all the things that are happening in life right now? God, what is my, who am I and what is my purpose? Where did I come from and what am I here for? The book of Ephesians, scholars believe, was written to answer this question. It's also important to note, as I got into learning more about the book of Ephesians, it's important to note that this letter, this is, first of all, it's written by a guy named Paul. Paul's probably the most influential Christian to ever live. Paul wrote two-thirds of the New Testament. There was different churches all over Asia Minor gathering in the cities, and he would write them letters to encourage them in particular. And those became known as Paul's letters. If you want to sound really fancy in your small group, you can refer to them as Pauline epistles. And everyone will go, whoa, you're really smart. So these epistles, these letters that were written by Paul, are written to churches. And here's the thing that's really important. I just, as an aside, I just want to encourage you to do this. These letters that Paul wrote, Romans and 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, that big chunk in the New Testament, when they arrived at a church, someone would get up in front of the church after the student pastor did the announcements and made fun of the senior pastor that's been going on for thousands of years. They would get up and they would say, this is a letter from Paul. And they would read it. And they wouldn't just read chapter one. They wouldn't just parse out one of the little phrases and spend the Sunday on that. They would read the whole thing, start to finish. These letters are intended to be read from start to finish. Paul did not write this with chapters. Chapters got added hundreds of years later, thousands of years later. We didn't do that. Or he didn't do that. We put those there. It was intended to be read from start to finish. So I would encourage you, as we go through the book of Ephesians, Kyle has made a reading plan for us that's going to take us through the book two times if you read every day. But I would encourage you at some point in the next now five weeks to take some time. It won't take you but 30 or 45 minutes, or if you're Doug Bergeson, about an hour and a half to really sound out the words. To sit down and read it from start to finish. Sit down at some point or another and read the whole book from start to finish. And there you'll start to see the nuances and the points and really the overarching themes of the book of Ephesians come out. So that would be my challenge to you during this series, is to sit down and read it from start to finish and see what comes out to you. It's perfectly fine, like we're going to do this morning, to camp out in one verse, but it's important that we get the whole theme. The other thing I would say as we launch into our series in Ephesians, as I now step into it, Patrick did a great job last week of starting us in chapter one. There's no way I can do all of chapter two this week. If you love the book of Ephesians and you know chapter two well, I'm going to tell you this right up front. You're going to be disappointed today, okay? I'm not going to get to the theological thing that you want me to get to. It's just, there's so much there. I can't cover it all. So I have to invest our time in this one place this morning, but you guys need to invest your time in learning the rest of it on your own. Six weeks isn't enough time to cover all the theology in Ephesians. But that's why Paul wrote Ephesians. And he wrote it, we think, to the church in Ephesus, but really it was to all the churches surrounding the ancient city of Ephesus. And it just kind of found its home base in Ephesus. And so it became the book of Ephesians, but really it's a general letter to the churches to tell us our identity and our purpose, to give us the answers to those questions we've been asking for all of time. That's why he wrote it. And if that's why he wrote it, to tell us who we are and why we're here. Really to answer that question, another way to think about this is if you were to say, God, what's your will for my life? What would you have me do? Some of us are in our 20s and we've got our life in front of us and we're going, God, what do you want me to do? Some of us have lived life and we're kind of midlife and we're kind of going, God, have I been doing what you want me to do? And am I going to do now what you want me to do? Some of us have moved into a season of life that's different. You find yourself as empty nesters or adult children or you have grandchildren and you feel like maybe part of life has run its course and now we're going, now, Father, what would you have me do? We ask this question over and over again in our life. Father, what is your will for us? What do you want me to do? This verse answers that question. This verse is the better version, I think, of Jeremiah 29, 11. It's in chapter 2, verse 10. If you have a Bible, you can turn there. It follows a discourse that's showing you how you get saved. If you need to know, if your question is, how do I get saved? What do I need to do? Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 are the most succinct explanation of salvation you can find in the Bible. And it starts off, we're dead in our trespasses. God loves us. He gives us salvation by grace through faith. That not of yourself is a gift of God, not of works, so that no man can boast. So if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, God's will for you is that you would become a believer. Once you are a believer, God's will for you is revealed in verse 10. And it says this, for we, the church, the Christians, those that call God their Father and Jesus their Savior, for we are His workmanship. His there is God. For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. You want to know what God's will is for your life? You want to know who you are and why you're here? This is it. You are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you may walk in them. I love this verse. As I was studying personally a couple of years ago, I came across this verse. I had never noticed it before. I had always paid attention to all the other very worthwhile things in Ephesians chapter two. And for whatever reason, when I sat down to read this verse on that day years ago, it leapt off the page. And this is one of those that I've been waiting for the opportunity to preach for a couple of years. And now that it's finally here, I'm going to pitch a dud. But we're going to do our best to make this verse matter to everybody because I love it so much. And the first thing we see is that we are God's workmanship. He created us. And just that sentence right there, we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, just that phrase has so much in it. The first thing we see, the first thing that I would note is that that gives us our position in creation. I try to say as often as I can and make this point as often as I can because I think it's a salient one that the Bible starts with a very intentional sentence. In the beginning, God created. And if you were to ask, why does it start that way? You could say, well, that's the beginning of the story and that's fair. But I think there's more more going on there. When we see in the beginning God created, when we see in chapter 2, verse 10, that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, that immediately tells us our position in creation. God is the creator, and we are the created. God is the creator, and we are the creation. And I would submit to you that all discord with God, all sin, all disunity, even all lack of joy and happiness can be traced back to our misunderstanding this fundamental relationship. All discord we experience with God, if he is the creator and we are the created, then all discord that we experience is because in our lives we went, no thanks, I'm here. You see, all unhappiness that we experience, all sin can be boiled down to us going, I don't accept the fundamental order of creation and I want to elevate myself to my authority in my own life. Wasn't this the sin of Eve in the garden? For those unfamiliar, the Bible starts with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. There's one rule, don't eat of that tree. And Satan comes up and sidles up next to Eve and he says, don't you want to eat of that tree? And I don't know if she rejects it or not, but he says, you know that God doesn't want you to eat of that tree because if you eat of it, you will become like him. And Eve went, oh, I want to be like him. And she became God in her own life. And that's how sin entered the world. And for us in our lives, when we experience any discord at all, the root of it is we have forgotten our fundamental position in creation. If you don't think that's true, read the book of Job and tell me what God is saying to Job in chapters 38, 39, and 40. He's saying, Job, you've forgotten your place. I'm the creator. You're the creation. So that sentence gives us our position in creation. It also gives us our purpose. It lets us know that because God created us, that he can now imbue us with purpose. Because he made us, he decides what we're for and what we're to be used for. That's not up to us to decide. We don't have to figure that out. We just have to ask God what it is. It also gives us our purpose. And then another thing that we see, I think, is that God takes pride in his creation. This last week, we finally launched our new website. Okay, our new website is up and running, graceralee.org. If you have a chance to go check it out today on mobile or on your desktop or whatever, go look at it. I think it's phenomenal. I think a guy named Hugh Butler did it for us. I think he did a phenomenal job. When you go look at it, I think you're gonna be really proud of your church. That website looks way better than us. That's what I would say, okay? You're going to go, oh man, this is such a good first impression. It's a really good website. And as we were designing it, the designer, a guy named Hugh, we were meeting with him. And I told him, I said, listen, man, you're more creative than me. You're way better at this than I could ever be. I don't want my preferences or what I'm asking you to do to limit your creativity in any way. I don't want the instructions that I give you to feel like they're limiting. I want your creation to have full reign. And actually what I told him is, I want you to be so proud of this website that it's the one you use to show to future clients to get their business. Like, you do whatever you want, just make it awesome. And after he got into designing it a little bit, he said, hey man, would you mind if I put my name down at the bottom of it? If I said that the website was made by HBCO, the name of his company? I said, no, absolutely, go ahead. Because I want him to be proud of what he did. And if you go to the website and you scroll to the bottom of the front page, you'll see website created by HBCO because he's proud of what he created. When you make something, you're proud of it. You guys know this. When you make something in your wood shop, when you put something back together, you show your wife, you show people, you take pictures of it, you text it to your buddies. Look what I did. When you put together, ladies, when you design something new, when you buy a new outfit, Jen does this all the time. I think that's creation. You've created a new outfit for Lily. She brings it home and then I have to go, that's the cutest thing ever. It's just, it's way cuter than the other 20 I've seen this year. Like, that's what you have to say. Like, when we create something, we want people to notice it. We take pride in that. That's what God does with his creation. He takes pride in you. Listen, this sounds flippant. It's not. God didn't make any duds, okay? God didn't create the good ones on Monday morning when he was fresh and then like Friday afternoon just spit out Jeff Lemons. Like that's not how that works. Yeah, whatever, this will be okay. God doesn't make any duds. He doesn't run out of energy. He created you. He is proud of you. He takes pride in his creation. And so in this very first sentence in Ephesians 2, verse 10, we see some huge themes. In this first statement, we see our position in creation, our purpose in creation, and His pride in creation. From the very beginning, it tells us our identity. If you were to ask, who am I? How did I get here? You are from God. If you are a believer, you are his child. It's his will that you would come into his family. And because of that, he's imbued you with purpose and he takes great pride in you. That one sentence at the very beginning, we see our position in creation, our purpose in that creation and his pride in his creation. And then once that's established, God made us. What did he make us for? Well, the very next sentence answers that question. He created us for good works that we might walk in them. I love the idea of this sentence. We don't have to figure out, God, what's your will for me? His will for you is that you would walk in the good works that he created for you. You have to think, God, what am I supposed to do with my life? Well, you're supposed to walk in the good works that he created for you. It's super simple. We don't have to figure this out. We don't have to divine anything or read the tea leaves. We just have to say that we were created to walk in the good works that he made for us, that he predetermined for us. That's our job. That's what we have to do. And it's at this point that I think we can kind of read this in two different ways. And the two ways to receive this passage, to kind of process it, I think, are kind of, you get the two pendulum swings in my marriage. Okay, Jen's not here this morning because Lily has neon green snot coming out of her nose, but if she were here, she would nod her head in agreement. There's me, when I see this, I'm an egomaniac. So when I read that I was created for good works beforehand, that I should walk in them, I go, that's right. I have a lot of talents to offer you, God. Where would you like me to be in your church? Like, yes, this makes sense to me. How would you like to use me? And I feel this grand sense of purpose and design and calling. Now, I'm humbled by that, and that's silly, and God doesn't need me at all. There's a story in the Old Testament where God talks through a donkey, and my dad likes to remind me often, if God can speak through a donkey, then he can speak through you. So don't get a big head, and that's not the word that he uses. He uses the King James version for that particular. But some of us read this, and because we're more maybe confident people, I don't know the best way to say it. Maybe it's just we're jerks. We go, yeah, okay, God, you've given me some gifts. How do I use them for you? But I think most of us process this like my wife does, who tend to think, I don't really have anything to offer. There can't possibly be a lot of good works that matter. My good works in comparison to others are really small. Certainly this verse applies to other people that are going to make a larger impact than me. And I think a lot of us tend to disqualify ourselves from passages like this. Other people were created for the good works. Other people should walk in those. That's really not for me. And I would just humbly submit to you, if that's how you feel, that that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says everyone, we, all Christians, if you're a believer, if you know Jesus, then God created you for good works, that you should walk in them, and those good works matter. And I would further submit to you, if you feel like someone who's on the fringe, who couldn't possibly be used in meaningful ways by God, that he couldn't possibly really have a plan for you, then I would point out to you that the people that God uses over and over and over again, generation after generation in scripture, are the exact people who would feel like you do right now if they were told, God has big plans for you. David would have never believed that. the youngest of eight sons watching the sheep on the hillside. Moses would have never believed that, a shepherd of 40 years out in the desert. Rahab would have never believed that, a prostitute in a forgotten city of Jericho. So if that's how you feel this morning, you're in good company. So these good works are for everyone. And if we want to know what are our good works, what can I do? How do I know this to be true? How do I begin to apply myself? I would make these points because I think we find our good works rooted in these truths. I would make these two points. First, everyone matters to someone. Everyone matters to someone. There are people in your life that if you said something nice to them, it would lift them up. If you said something harsh to them, it would tear them down. There are people in your life, whether you know it or not, who are watching you to determine how they should act in certain situations. There are people in your job, at your workplace, and you might not even know this, but they might know that you go to church. And when something happens in the company, when an email goes out, when a meeting happens, when someone goes long or someone says something snide, there are people who are looking at you to determine how a Christian reacts. Everybody matters to somebody. And everybody excels at something. Everyone is good at something. You might not feel like you're good at something, but I'm telling you, everyone is good at something. These last two years, I've gone to Mexico. I've been to Mexico three years in a row, but the last two years, there's been a guy come on the trip named Jacob Gutierrez. Jacob is the son of one of our great grace partners, and their family comes down every year. And Jacob's 24 years old, and he struggles with Down syndrome. And so when Jacob is there, there are some things that he feels like he can't do. There are some ways that he feels like he can't contribute like everyone else. There are some things that he feels like, man, I don't excel at that. But two years in a row, we've sat around the circle at the end of the night. If you've been on a mission trip, you know the circle, man. It's the same circle everywhere on every continent. You work all day, you get to the end of the day, you sit around because you're Christians and you sing songs and then somebody shares the devotion and then you ask the question, all right, what happened today? What did you see today? Let's talk about today. Let's kind of decompress, okay? And so I've seen two years in a row with Jacob in that circle, somebody say, man, I've learned so much from Jacob being here. And I learned it too. And as I watched him interact with everybody this week, I saw a guy with unfailing sweetness and kindness to other people. I saw a guy who never ever acted like he was in a conversation he didn't want to be in. Who never acted like he didn't have time for somebody. Who was never not interested in what somebody was saying. I saw a guy who, if you asked him to stay up all night talking to you, he would, about nothing. I saw a guy that loved people really well. And two years in a row, I'm not making this up, this isn't speaker embellishment, I'm telling you the truth. Two years in a row, I've come home with this indelible impression and thought, man, I need to be more like Jacob. Everybody matters to someone and everybody excels at something. So even if you think, gosh, I'm not sure that I have anything to offer in the kingdom of God. Yes, you do. There are people watching you and there are things that you are good at. We all have our comfort zone. So the question becomes, not do I have good works, but Father, what are my good works? What are my good works? What have you purposed me to do? What do you want me to do? I think a good way to answer that question is to start with, who are the people that I matter to, and what are the things that I feel like I'm okay at? What are the things that I feel like I excel at? You could say, what are the things that people affirm in you? You could say, what are the things that you're passionate about? What are the things that tick you off that make you want to make a change? But I think the most reasonable question for all of us to ask this morning, our Father, what are my good works? What have you designed me and purposed me to do? What am I gifted to do? What am I purposed to do? And there's an answer for everybody. So I would tell you this as your pastor, or if you're visiting as just a guy, that if you were to ask me, what's God's will for my life? I would ask you, I don't know. What are your good works? What has he designed you to do? And this is a layered question because sometimes this means for all of life. This means overarching call on life. My good work, I feel right now, is to be a pastor. And I think that that's gonna be a lifelong call. I hope that it is, that that's my good work. And so sometimes when we ask that, we're asking for this big overarching question. And sometimes God gives us that answer and sometimes he doesn't yet. So the more pertinent question is, God, what are my good works right now? What would you have me do right now? Father, I'm content if I don't get the five-year answer. I'm content if you don't give me the 10-year plan. God, what would you have me do right now? What are my good works right now? And then we ask that question. Say, Father, what are my good works and how do I walk in them? What have you designed me to do and how do I walk in them? And I'm grateful at Grace that we have examples of people all over the place who are walking in their good works. I think of Cindy Hayes. She's right here. Everyone look at her. She's right there in the third row. She's super embarrassed right now. Yeah, she's the best. If you're friends with Cindy, ask her about the nickname that she got in Mexico. I will not say it, Cindy. I will not say it, but you should ask her because it's funny. For about nine or 10 years, Cindy has served on our personnel committee. Cindy has a background in HR. She's been doing that her whole career. She's sharp and smart and has kept us legal and has told me many times since I got here, Nate, you cannot do that. That is illegal. Like you will, you'll take the church down in flames with you if you do that. Do not do that. And behind the scenes has protected us and guided us and seen us through hirings and seen us through dismissals and seen us through policy changes. And she did that for about nine or 10 years and just recently stepped off. So I wanted us first to pause and say thank you to Cindy for doing that for us. But I would tell you that for that period of time in her life, that was her good work to walk in. She was doing what God designed her to do. And it probably didn't feel like that to her. It probably didn't feel, she wouldn't have said at the beginning of those nine years, this is my good work and I'm gonna walk in it, Lord. That's probably not what she would have said, but that's what she did. That was her unique talent that she had to offer to God's kingdom and she built a church that way. I watched while we were in Mexico this last week, a guy came with us named Nate, and he's a carpenter. And we went down, and Nate had, he had his wrist was hurt. It was taped up. I think he was faking it to get out of work, but really milking it for some sympathy. But he couldn't pick up things on the job site, and so they told him, man, you can't come to the job site. But back at where we were staying, there was supposedly a wood shop that was filled with clutter and filth and trash and little bits of wood and sawdust and tools that were disassembled and in disrepair. And it was a totally useless space. And Nate decided that that week, what he was going to do is turn that into a usable wood shop for those folks. And by the time he left, that space looked like a professional wood shop. He built shelves. He sorted wood. He threw things away. He assembled tools. He lined it up. He showed the guys how to use the different tools. He told them this was dangerous. You need to sell it as fast as you can. Don't do this. And by the time he left, that place looked like a professional wood shop. And what I know for sure is he had some help. He had some dummies like me carrying wood and going, where do I put it? But we added no talent to the equation. So what I know is that if Nate had not gone, that would not have gotten done. And so that week, that was his good work to walk in. And I really do think that life is just as simple as, Father, what are my good works? And how can I walk in them? And can I share with you what happens when we'll do this for a lifetime? If you'll be a person who will just ask God faithfully, what are my good works? And how do I walk in them? My mom all passed away some years ago. I'm Southern, so I have a mom all. And for the last year of her life, I had the privilege of meeting with her every other Monday to have coffee with her. And as we would meet and spend time together, I learned about who she was. She was a woman, she had an older sister named Ann. My grandma's name was Linda. And Linda was convinced that Ann was more talented than her. She sang in like the school plays. She was prettier than her. All the boys paid attention to Ann and none of the boys paid attention to Linda. My papa actually met her by hitting on Ann. Ann said she was taken and he said, do you have a sister? And she goes, yeah. She's working down the street. So he goes down the street, and they dance together. And he said the first time he felt her in his arms, he knew that this was the one, which is just great because they were together for their whole life. She always felt like kind of the fading flower, the one in the background. She felt overshadowed by her sister. She never wanted to be in the spotlight. My grandfather, Don, had a huge personality. He would fill a room. Everybody loved him, and she was always playing the supporting role to him. Her children, some of them, had a big personality. She was always playing the supporting role to them. She didn't come to know the Lord until later in life. She started having babies at 19. She had four kids. And then somewhere in her late 20s, early 30s, she came to know the Lord because one of her children started going to the local church. And she never thought she had anything to offer. This little, she's tiny, diminutive woman. But she just loved the people that were in front of her. And even though she was never in public, even though she never had the spotlight, one time I remember she felt like her good work was to take a group of teenagers to Peru. The church was taking a mission trip to Peru. She was in her 60s, and she was like, yeah, I'll take them. And she just went. Everybody was shocked. What in the world? So when I did her funeral, even though she was a woman who never had any spotlight, who never felt like she had anything to offer, there was 400 people there. There was a whole section of young families that were representatives of the girls in Peru that she took, who years later said, we want to come honor Miss Linda. She worked at First Union at the time as a bank teller for years. She hadn't been there for 15 years. There's a whole section of people that she worked with who said, we want to honor Miss Linda. There's people coming out of the woodwork saying, we want to honor this woman because she loved us well. And her family, we had no idea that she was this loved. And it made an indelible impact on me. And to me, that's the evidence of a life lived. Saying, Father, what is my good work? And how do I walk in it? And that's what I want you to do too. We don't have to know, God, what's your will for me? What are the plans that you have for me for forever? He might tell us that, he might not. But if we want to know God's will for our life, it begins with that question. What are the good works that you created me for and how can I begin to walk in them? If you need a jump start on these good works, we have sheets in your seats to volunteer here at Grace. And I want to be very careful with this. I did not preach this sermon to get you to volunteer here, okay? I didn't do that. If your vision for what are the good works that I have to walk in is ushering, then you need better vision, man. You need a bigger view than that. Don't laugh too hard, slide guy. It's bigger than that too. It's a bigger vision than that. I'm not talking about how we can all volunteer here, but I will say if you've been coming here, particularly if you started within the last 12 months and you're not plugged in yet to a service team, this is a great way to get plugged in, a great way to get your foot in the door. And if you're asking the question, what are my good works? And you're not sure, a great start is to begin to volunteer somewhere. The last church that I attended without getting paid to show up was a church called Greystone back home. And when I went, I just wanted to get plugged in. And so I said, I don't know what my good works are here, Father, but I'm going to start ushering. I signed up to do that. That led to helping with the students. That led to a small group. That led to a staff position. We never know what's going to happen. But I want you to be people who walk in the good works that God created for you. If you need help getting started with those, we have the service sheets in your seats. The things that are highlighted in red are things that we need particularly right now. I would also mention that not listed on the sheet is a missions team that you can join. So if you're interested in doing that, you can just write that at the bottom. But if you're not plugged in yet or you have questions about that, fill that out. And in a few minutes, Kyle's gonna come up and pray for us and we're gonna do the offering. You can drop that in the basket when it comes by or especially if you're watching online, you can go to our super great website and go to gracerother.org slash service teams and we have a form there that you can fill out. But let us be people who ask God, Father, what are my good works and how do I walk in them? Let's pray. Father, we love you. You're good to us. You watch out for us. You care for us. Father, we know that you have a plan for us. I pray that you would give us the faith to believe that, the courage to ask what our good works are and the obedience to walk in them. God, I pray if there's anybody here who doesn't know you, that they would come to know you. Lord, I also pray for anybody here that may just be feeling a little tired, a little run down. Would you energize them? Would you let them know today in some way that speaks directly to their heart that you care about them? Father, would you use us in incredible ways to build your kingdom and serve your purpose? It's in your son's name we pray, amen.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning to all of you. I'm so glad to be here. And as Nate said, I've just gotten to know Nate over the last few months. We did a funeral together. A member of our congregation, my old congregation, had passed away. His daughter was very involved in the youth ministry here. And so that's how Nate and I got to know each other. And just an interesting note, I was a pastor of an Anglican church. And in Anglican churches, oftentimes the senior pastor is called the rector. So I met Nate. I'm like, man, I think you're in the wrong outfit. But anyway, it's really been a pleasure to meet him. And it's really been a thrill because I don't know if you know, Church of the Apostles used to be located on Sumner Boulevard right next to Grace Community. And so over the years, I got to know a little bit about Grace Community and I learned some of the great ways that God has used you all as a church, but I also know that you've been through some heartaches in the last several years. And so I was thrilled to find out that you had a new pastor and a new rector. And what I was even more thrilled about is that I can tell he really loves you guys. He prays for you. He's delighted in you. He loves the gospel and he loves sharing the gospel with you. And I want to encourage you as his people to encourage him, you know, to let him know how much his ministry means to you, not just in the hard times, because he will minister to you in the hard times, but when you're experiencing good things, when you're learning things from him, let him know. I can't tell you how much that encourages a pastor's heart. The second thing before I start, I want to commend you because I know that a number of you also were in Grace Community through those hard years when there was a lot of transition and you weren't sure what was going to be happening. And I bless you for your faithfulness in that time. The Lord is blessing you and he's bringing great fruit to your ministry. And I'm just so glad to be part of it today. So I wanna join you in prayer now and thank God for all these things. Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for your grace in our lives. We're so grateful for your promise that through Jesus, your son, and the power of your Holy Spirit, you are here right now. You are affecting the words that will be preached and the words that will be meditated on and the word read and the word spoken. That it might be a living word that gets into our hearts and our minds and that it changes us, Lord, that it shapes us for your purposes and for your glory in the world. We offer you ourselves now, Lord, for that. We ask humbly that you would do that, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts would be pleasing and. Ephesians has six chapters, and it's a huge task because literally every chapter you could probably preach about 10 sermons out of. So I'm going to do my best to preach 10 sermons to you today out of Ephesians 1. No, I'm going to focus in really on one specific word, and I'll use it to take us through Ephesians 1. So if you want to turn to Ephesians, there's Bibles in the seats in front of you. I'm going to be reading out of the NIV here. And I want to focus in on this word blessing that Paul talks about, this word blessing. How many of you feel blessed today? Yeah. What does that mean? Have you ever wondered about that? When you ask somebody, how you doing? And they say, oh, I'm blessed. I'm blessed. What are they talking about? You know, so often what we're talking about, what I'm talking about when I say blessed is things are going right in my life. There's material blessings. I can look around and say, man, I've got a wife. I've got two wonderful girls. I've got grandchildren. And by the way, have you ever heard the saying that if I'd have known how much fun it was to have grandkids, I would have had them first. Absolutely true. But you know what blessings they are. People say, I'm blessed because I have a good home. I've got a good job. I'm driving a Maserati. I'm not driving a Maserati, but you know, I mean, people look at the material things in their lives and they say, I'm blessed to the extent that they have them in abundance. And when they lack them, they seem to lack a sense of blessing. Now, this is not bad. In fact, in the Old Testament, the majority of the blessings have to do with material blessings. When it says the Lord bless you and keep you and the Lord be gracious unto you, graciousness is spelled out in the Old Testament by saying, may the Lord increase your flocks, your grain and your new wine. May the Lord increase the abundance of your tribe, your children, and your grandchildren. God speaks very unashamedly about pouring out material blessings on his people. But when we get to Ephesians, Paul speaks of spiritual blessings. And so the question comes, well, what is that? What would it be for us to be a people who, when we answer the question, how are you, can say I'm blessed, not just because of the material things in our lives and not feel a lack of blessing if those material things aren't there, but actually to say, I'm blessed because of the spiritual blessings in our lives. That's what Paul wants to get at right from the start with the Ephesians. In fact, the first three chapters of Ephesians is written in the form of a Jewish blessing, a berakah. So Paul is really intent on them understanding this. And I think it'll be great if we can come away understanding it at least a little deeper today. So let me start with the first few verses. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to God's holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. I love that. I've always loved that passage. that notion that every spiritual blessing in Christ is mine. But if you'd ask me, what are those spiritual blessings? I said, well, I'm not really sure. You know, joy, peace, love, all those kind of things. But Paul actually spells it out in this hymn of praise, in this song of blessing. And so what I want to do is look at several of those blessings with you. The first is this. It says in verse 4, For he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, God had you in mind. God had always planned for you to be here today. God had always planned for you to name the name of Jesus as his daughter or his son from the foundation of the world. This is incredible spiritual blessing and resource. If you've ever felt rejected, if you ever walked into your home and shut your door and just wanted to bury your head underneath your pillow, and then you looked up at the doorframe of your room and there above the door was written these words, if you could imagine, chosen before the foundation of the world. That's who you are. That's the spiritual blessing that is yours. Chosen. That's a big deal. Have you ever talked to somebody who's been adopted? And anybody in here been adopted? Or has adopted? Have any of you adopted kids? It's a fantastic and wonderful thing. But invariably, if you have been adopted or you have adopted children, at some point, somebody comes up to you and says this insensitive thing. They say to you, but who are your real parents? You know, or if you've adopted someone, they say, oh, you're his adoptive mom, but who's his real mom? Which the answer is, please come a little closer so I can smack you. Now, the answer is, please come a little closer so I can smack you. Now the answer is, I'm her real mom. I'm his real dad. Those are my real parents. They chose me. They spend their lives for me. It was costly for them to change their lives to welcome me in. I've been bought with a price. You hear the echoes of the gospel? It was costly for God to choose you. And yet he did it. And the spiritual blessings go on. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. Holy and blameless. What a spiritual blessing that is, that you are declared and in God's sight, actually holy and blameless. How many times in your life have you been in conflict with people, a spouse or a boss or a coach or somebody in your life or a peer, and they're assigning blame to you for something. And perhaps some of that blame is real and you can own it, but some of it is unjustified and false. And you argue and you go back and forth with him. That doesn't happen with God. You are holy and blameless in his sight. You don't come to him and his throne and stand before him and he begins to list out all the ways he's disappointed in you, all the ways that you have screwed up and messed up. No, he says, come here, my beloved. You just look perfect today. How our souls need that. That spiritual blessing is ours. And still it goes on. For it says, for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will, in love and pleasure, in love and pleasure. Too often we think about God as if he has to do these things, right? Because he's God, he's got to have a system and the world has to operate a certain way and good people need to get their blessings and bad people need to get their curses and all that stuff. But no, the scriptures say that he acts out of love and pleasure. God actually enjoys you. He enjoys his work and what he does. He enjoys us. Pleasure is a big deal. It's a big deal to me. I imagine it's a big deal to you as well. One of the ways it's a big deal to me is I'm a foodie, right? I love like gourmet food. I love great desserts. I love ice cream. And I receive a lot of pleasure in those settings. But I found out several months ago that I had intolerances to wheat, to gluten, and to dairy. I was like, that's pizza. I mean, that's horrible, you know? And it was affecting the ice cream intake and all that. And one day I discovered that Ben and Jerry's has a gluten-free, dairy-free option in Cherry Garcia. I've been eating it like every night. It's awesome. I take great pleasure in it. God, even more, makes such great pleasure and delight in his children, in exercising his will in our lives, in drawing us to him, in teaching us, in filling us filling us and empowering us and pouring out his spirit. God is a being who loves to experience that great pleasure. And it is a great spiritual blessing to us to be on the receiving end of it. And he does this all, it says in verse 6, to the praise of his glorious grace. Would you say that with me? Ready? To the praise of his glorious grace. Now, what does that mean? To the praise of his glorious grace. You know, the reformers kind of put it this way. They say that God is the creator of all things. And we as a people tend to want to praise things. If we see something excellent or admirable, we praise it. If we see an athlete that's above the other athletes, we praise him. If we see an artist who produces fantastic works of art, we praise them. When we see somebody in the zone, in business or whatever it might be, we praise them. And the reformers say, it is God who made each and every one of them. It is God who empowered each and every one of them. Therefore, he is the one, the source of all that is beautiful, all that is excellent, all that is praiseworthy, and deserves and demands that praise. But it's good for us to give that praise. John Piper puts it this way. The glory of God is what we were made to see and enjoy for all eternity. Nothing else will satisfy our souls. Therefore, if God does not exalt himself for us to admire and enjoy, then he is unloving. That is, he does not give us what we need. And that's really good. I wouldn't argue with John Piper. But I'm something of an artist myself, you know, and I like to think of things from that perspective on the other side of the brain. And I started thinking, what does this look like, this blessing of praise and of giving praise? What's it look like in our lives? Have you ever been part of a standing ovation? I mean, if you've been to a high school play, you've been part of a standing ovation. And the reason is, is because the person's parents are there in the audience and their friends are in the audience. So they all like spontaneous because they're cheering on their friend. And so you stand up and you cheer. But if you've ever been part of an ovation where you don't know the actors or the musicians who are up on that stage, but they perform so fantastically and so beautifully and so powerfully that you don't even think about it. Before you know it, you're standing on your feet, you're applauding, and you know what's going on in that moment? You're in it. You are not a spectator. You are a participant. That's what it is to live for the praise of his glorious grace. It's to be in the moment with God, praising him for how awesome he is, for the sunset and the power of the thunderstorm and for the music and the wonder and the glory of life. That's what he has for you. And what a spiritual blessing that is. If we can just access it, if we can just be in it, be part of the ovation of God. And the blessings go on. To the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one go on. Now here we get to one of the blessings that probably we would have come up with if we'd have just thought, I'm forgiven. I am forgiven. This is a little bit different than the holy and blameless blessing. Because the word that Paul uses here is not the typical word. The Greek word hamartia refers to the condition of sin for which we have been declared absolutely cleansed, holy, and blameless in God's sight. But the word that Paul uses here is the word paraptoma, which is about the plethora of sins, the acts, the sinful acts that John tells us that we continue to commit as Christians, right? He says, if any of you says I'm without sin, he's a liar and the truth is not within him. And what Paul is telling us here is that we have this ongoing, continuous forgiveness of sins given to us by God, lavished on us through Jesus Christ. But it's more than just a forgiveness. It's a redemption. It's a buying back. It's a changing of our very character and nature. James, in his epistle, writes, confess your sins one to another, that you may be forgiven, that you may be healed. That literally, when we take our habitual sins to the Lord, say, forgive me, forgive me, Lord. He not only forgives you and wipes it away, he transforms you. He begins to heal you and change you and shape you to give you a greater love for that which is good and a greater disdain for that which pulls you away from God's absolute best for you. That's an incredible, incredible spiritual blessing that is ours in Jesus Christ. I want to share one more. These are certainly not the only spiritual blessings, but one more. It says, That last spiritual blessing is that you and I would have knowledge of Him and of his plans for us. We had knowledge of him and of his purpose for our lives. In the Anglican church, most Anglican churches have communion almost every Sunday. And communion is best understood as a mystery. not in the sense that you don't know what's going on, but in the sense that you have been invited into something that apart from the grace of God, you could never comprehend. So when we come to the communion table, where the body and the blood of Christ is held out for us, where we enter into the very life of Jesus, who said, if you eat my body and drink my blood, you have a part in me. He's not talking about some kind of gross, you know, literal, physical thing. What he's talking about is spiritually, when we come to communion, we are inwardly reminded to the depths of our being that we belong, that we are his, that he knows us, and we know him. That our lives matter. That they have meaning and purpose. What a blessing. What a blessing to be known in that way. How do you access all of that? That's the big question, right? How do you make it yours for sure? Now, probably many are tempted to say, well, you know, you're a pastor and it's pastor's job to kind of be intimate with this stuff, to know it and to dwell on it. And that's true. And it actually is one of the blessings of being a pastor. But several months ago, I resigned from being pastor. And, you know, kind of held on to God through that. But as that holding on and holding on and holding on wore off, I began to start looking at, all right, Lord, what's next? And that's a hard place to be in, to not know. You have to say, Lord, what would you have me do? Where would you have me go? How am I going to, in the future, provide material blessings for my wife, for my family? And so I've experienced, I think, what many of us experience is those anxieties about those things. And during this time, I would love to say I have just been just the picture of what a Christian ought to be. But it's not true. Times I have been anxious and impatient and short with my wife and lacking faith and all those things. But what I have found is that when I sit back down and take a deep breath and begin to rehearse the blessings I have in Christ, who I am, who he is, the kind of provider he is, the opportunity to trust him, to know him, that he then transforms my attitude toward the material world, toward possessions, toward situations, toward all those things. And I'm not unique. It's true for all of you as well. So what do you do? How do you appropriate it? I believe Paul has that in mind. What I want to do is close out by reading the last several verses of this chapter, because what they are is they're a prayer at this point. Paul in verse 17, prays this of them. And I want to tell you, he's praying it of you as well. I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people and his incomparably great power for us who believe. I'm telling you, that is what Nate is praying for you guys over and over and over again. That is how you receive it, is by just reaching up into the heavenly realms where the Holy Spirit, where Jesus himself is interceding for you and say, yes, Lord, I receive it. All the wisdom, all the power, all the grace, all the blessing you want to give. That power is the same as the mighty strength which God exerted when he raised Christ from the dead, seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present, but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything and every one of you in every way. Your job is just to receive it. Let me close today with a blessing that you might receive and you might receive all that God has for you in Jesus Christ. May the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and give you peace and be gracious unto you. May the Lord give you the fullness of the knowledge of Him through His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, and through the power of his Holy Spirit to the praise of his glorious grace. Amen. Thank you.