What God has done through Christ for us
This week’s audio recording encountered some technical difficulties. In the interest of serving our church family we are posting what we have. We apologize for the poorer than normal audio quality.
Transcript
This week's audio recording encountered some technical difficulties. In the interest of serving our church family, we're posting what we have. We apologize for the poorer-than-normal quality of our audio. All right, good morning. All right.
We're going to be in Ephesians, chapter 1. So we're taking this fall, and then we'll take a break at our Christmas and New Year, and then we'll be back up in the spring. We're going to study straight through the book of Ephesians. It'll be on page 567. We have one of these wine bottles. If you don't own a bottle, take this one with you.
It's our gift to you. We want you to have a bottle. We want you to read it. If you know anything about wine tasting, which I don't know a whole lot. My wife is a hotel restaurant tourism management major at USC, so she knows someone who's taught me some things. But maybe you've seen it on TV or if you're not a connoisseur.
So a wine tasting. You're going to have a little bit of wine, and you're going to do everything you can to exact to extract. That's how that works. Extract all of the flavor of that little bit of wine. You're going to swirl it and look at it. You're going to check the colors.
Then you're going to swirl it again. Take a full bouquet. A lumbar. You're going to stick your nose in it and smell it like that. Some people are like smishing and spit it out. Some people are just small, like a big bouquet and a couple of small bouquet.
But you're trying to find a full. And sometimes reading scripture and sometimes what we do on Sundays is like that. We take one little section, and we just try to get everything we possibly can out of it. We try to see fully every little nuance detail. Like that. Then we can hit that.
And just start to play. That's what today's going to feel like. You're not going to take it all in. You're not going to catch all the nuance and flavor. We're going to try to get one big overview. One big try to catch the gist of what Paul is saying.
Because we're going to look at verses 3 through 14 in the book of Ephesians. This is a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to a church in Ephesus that he helped get started. And verses 3 through 14 in the original Greek is one sentence. He just was like, I'm not done yet. He just kept going. If you turn this in on a paper, your teacher would have read your first sentence, which is pretty much his first sentence, and just been like, no.
Go back. Start over. This can't all be one sentence. But he made it all one sentence because Paul doesn't care about Greek and Rayburn. He cares about the point he was trying to make. And I love him for that because I also hate grammar.
One big sentence. We're going to look at the whole sentence in this entire day. And then next week and the following week, we're going to kind of mine in it a little bit. We're going to spend a little more time looking at some of the specifics of it. So let's pray, and then we're going to read this entire sentence.
It's a lot of sentences in English because the English translators are just like, no, we're going to make it work. But in Greek, it's an Olympic sentence that doesn't really work. So we're going to read it all at once. Let's pray first. God, we ask this morning as we try to take all of this in, as we try to take it in one full look, we just pray that you would help us to catch the overwhelming point that you're trying to make in this text. So God, I pray that you help us to see that today.
And then you would receive a lot of glory from it. In Jesus' name, amen. So again, we're not dipping our toe in. It's a hot day, and we're jumping in a freezing cold pool, and it's going to shock our senses, but it's going to be good for us. So we're going to read it all in one clip, and then we're going to go and work our way back.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him for the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him, in love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the below. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven, and things on the earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him, who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance, until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
Okay. Back to verse 3. Paul, in that one sentence, said nine times, nine times he showed us where God was acting on our behalf. Where God did something for us. Eleven times he uses the phrase, in Christ, or in him, or in the beloved. Eleven times in one sentence.
If you got a letter from a third grader, who was at Summer Pan, and they used the word awesome, eleven times in one sentence, you kind of get the gist of, oh, hey, it's going well, they're having a good time. Like that's eleven times in one sentence he says, in Christ, in him, this is what Jesus has done. And then fifteen times we're mentioned, but as passive receivers of God's works. And here's Paul's big point, and we can see it very clearly in verse 3. So let's read verse 3 together, and then we'll talk about the big point.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. When you use the word blessed in the Bible, when it says blessed be God, it means praise, exalted, honored. When it talks about us being blessed, it means you're receiving something from him. So, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. So the us there is the church.
It's all of those who are in Christ. All those who believe the gospel and been saved by Jesus is the us. So here's Paul's main point. Praise God for what he has done through Christ for us. That's the point of the sentence. That we would praise God for what he has done through Christ for us.
That God has worked through Christ for us and that we would praise him for. That's what he says over and over again. Four times at kind of the end of every little main thought he has. He says praise, praise God. He starts off with blessed be God. He ends with praise to his glorious grace or to his glory.
In the middle he says praise to his glorious grace, praise to his glory. That we would praise God for what he has done through Christ for us. So we're going to walk through and read what these spiritual blessings are. It says, Bless me God for us to the verse 3 of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us as the church in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Okay. There's two ways you need to listen today.
And it kind of depends on the seat you're sitting in. If you are here and you are a Christian, you place your faith in Jesus. The way we're listening today is almost as if we're going to look at all of the spiritual blessings. He's blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. That this is yours. So in some ways it's like someone showed up and said, you didn't know that you're the only person related to this very rich person and they left everything in their will to you.
My name is Doug and I have your butt. Oh gosh. Now, come with me. You get in a limousine. He drives you out. You get in a helicopter and you fly out and you and your new butt and your helicopter pilot are flying out and he says, this is the first island that you own.
You're like, ooh, ooh, ooh. I own multiple islands. You're just flying in a helicopter and he's just kind of pointing. This is this. This is this. If you are a Christian today, that's what we're looking at.
We're looking at Paul at the very beginning of this letter says, here's everything. You're in spiritual blessings that Christ has given us. Again, I don't think it's exhaustive but he's saying he's blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing and here they are and he gets to list them all. And if you're a Christian here we're just listening for, what has he done for me? What's true for me because of Jesus? But if you're in this one and you're not a Christian, you're, you've been hanging out with somebody, one of your friends at work has kept inviting you or someone who's your neighbor kind of kept inviting you maybe you've started hanging out with a community group.
Maybe this is your first time hanging out with us or you've been around someone some days but you're still just kind of checking out this Jesus thing. Maybe for some of you, you grew up in the South so you're fine with Jesus and honestly, you prayed a prayer, you said something up, you're pretty sure you're like, oh, I'm going to play them. But the more you've been hanging out the more you go, I don't know, I'm going to actually follow them. I don't know if this is actually praying with me. I'm still kind of checking this out. What I want you to hear today as we go through this is this is what can be true for you in Christ.
This is what Jesus does for all those who believe in him and you can today believe in him. You can hear today what he does and you can say, no, I love you, you're glorious, I want to repent of my sin, I want to follow you. So that's the way we're going to listen as we go through this. We're going to see the blessings that we have in Christ. Now Paul gives a lot of them so you're going to have to work a little bit to pay attention to that because we're going to move fairly quickly and I'm trying to explain what he gives a lot of them.
But, they're yours. If we went to listen to the reading of a book and they said our name, I'm pretty sure we would listen well when they listed off all the things. So I'm going to try not to move, but I want us to be able to hear all this and let's pay attention to what Christ has done for us. Okay. Verse 4. So he's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in every place.
Verse 4. Even as he chose us in him so that he there is God the Father, in him is Christ. So even as God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. The first thing that he says we're spiritually blessed with in Christ is that before God set the world in motion, he chose the church. He chose those who would believe in him that he would make them holy and blameless.
If you're a Christian, he chose you to make you holy and blameless. Now, holy and blameless aren't words we use a whole lot, but man, is it nice to be described that way if you're a Christian. Like, the only time some of y'all use the word holy, some of us, like, when I use the word holy is like, hey, these are more blue jeans, these are holy. Like, they wore out on these means. What it means, those that were set apart, that he took us, pulled us out, set us apart, and then made us blameless. Now, I know a good bit of y'all.
I don't know all of y'all, but I know one thing very clearly. Ain't none of you blameless. If something turned out missing, I'd just go, yeah, somebody. I mean, I wouldn't even be sure I'm just, I'm just, that's all right, you know. Like, who we are in Christ. That we get to walk and stand before the God of the universe blameless.
That no one can say anything bad about us. We've been blessed by that in Christ. Meaning that when Jesus died, he took our blame. It's calm. You don't have it anymore. You can't beat yourself up anymore.
You can't carry around shame and guilt anymore. Jesus was beaten up for your blame. You are blameless. You have no more. Let's keep going.
Next blessing. Five. In four, in verse five. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ. According to the purpose of his will. According to the purpose of his will, there means because he wanted to.
Predestined. We'll talk more about it next week, what it means for God to do things according to his will. We'll be back in this section talking about what it means, what predestination means, like how it works. The word predestined means he destined pre, what he did beforehand. Like, if I knew we were going to get an argument, I pre-slapped you. He's going to say like it happened beforehand.
He destined us beforehand. He predestined us. That's what it means. And we'll talk more about how it works next week. So if that's something you've always been curious in it, or you're interested in, or you have, you know, you know some theology so you showed up really worried about that this morning.
We'll see you next week. In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Christ. Jesus Christ was the son of the fathers. The only begotten son of the father. What he did was he took our sin on himself so that we could become sons. Sons receive inheritance.
We'll get to that in a minute. That's one of the reasons why the Bible consistently says we're sons. Some of you are like, oh my father, no, you want to be a son, but the sons in their culture get the inheritance. So he made us sons, meaning that God the father because he loved us opened his home to us. You see, if he just said he made us blameless, it couldn't just be, okay, I won't send you to hell. Okay, you won't pay the debt you owe.
But he says, no, he made us blameless and then brought us into his home. He adopted us. My cousin, Robert, his wife, Lord, recently adopted a little girl named Elliot. They had to, the first mother kind of picked them out of the island and all this work today. I know they took a lot of time, took a lot of money in the birth certificate and said I want them to be the parents of my daughter. So they had to fly to Hawaii because there was a small island here in Hawaii that made this a new born.
And they got the date wrong. They didn't, the doctors who were saying what time the date was going to be born. And the baby was born three weeks later, which was kind of like good news, bad news. Bad news, you've got to be out of work for a lot longer and spend a lot of money that you weren't planning on spending. Good news, you're in Hawaii. It wasn't like they drove to North Dakota and they were like, tough luck, I feel like you're going to tell me.
Like it was, it was a decent deal. And I told him, I saw him this year and you could just see him with her and they love her and they're playing with her. And he's sitting in arms and I said, man, your daughter's beautiful. I'm sorry, because they're moving to Tennessee now. And I said, you are going to one day have to explain the direction because I grew up in Hawaii and now she goes to Tennessee. He didn't do much of this.
But that's all. I'm used to that. that they did this. The reason they adopted Ellie was because they loved her before they knew her. And then they waited on her and they loved her. It was to bring her into their home. What they were choosing to do was to, at great cost and expense to themselves, they said, we want to have you belong to us and you share our life with us.
And the God of the universe does that with us. That he predestined us for adoption as sons. That he did it in love. That he would open his home to us. That he would, Jesus Christ would die so that we could have seated on the table. That in the eternal, cosmic world where God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit existed in relationship with one another forever, Jesus would actually leave that.
God would turn his back on Jesus on the cross. That Jesus would take the wrath and the punishment we deserve. He would actually walk away, come here, take our sin, be crushed for it, so that space could be opened up and we could be welcomed. So that the table could get, and that's for us, from God, through Christ. We've been adopted. Verse 6.
So it says, through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which, with his glorious grace, he has blessed us in the blood. Okay, so, in Jesus, he blessed us with his glorious grace. Grace means unearned, undeserved, favor. faith. The Bible uses it. It means unearned, undeserved, favor. That you received something that you had not merited.
That God chose to bless us, not based off of what we have done. Actually, give us what we did not deserve. But one of the ways that someone can talk to remember is that it's God's riches at Christ's expense meaning that Jesus paid for us to get God's riches every day from God. Verse 7. In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace. So in Jesus, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.
So when he says redemption through his blood, he's pointing back, he's pointing back to the Moses bringing the Israelites out of slavery from Egypt. So what he's saying is that in Christ, we've been brought out of slavery. That we were slaves to sin, that we were slaves to our flesh, we were slaves to our desire that he's going to go to that more in chapter 2 where he says that we all once walked bowing down, basically worshiping our own desires, our own flesh, and following after Satan that we were enslaved, but that Jesus through his blood redeemed us, brought us out of slavery. That we're no more owned by sin, but we belong to Jesus.
And then he says the redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. You ever seen a sign that says no trespassing? You know what that means? Don't cross this line. If it's on this side of the tree, don't go past the... You ever come out of a place and you see no trespassing sign?
You're like, oops. God created the world to set up no trespassing signs. This isn't how you're going to treat people. This isn't how you're going to treat your famed Jews. This isn't how you're going to handle money. This isn't how you're going to treat those around people.
This isn't how you're going to treat the world and recreation and animal. He set up this world and you know what we've done all day long. We've crossed those lines as much as we possibly can. We just have. I feel like sometimes that I have been like, been to God when my two-year-old son has been to me. Tell him to do something.
He looks at me like, how quick are you? He was eight months old, nine months old, stuff like that, and he was across the room at an hour little. I said, uh-uh, he looked at me. Reached his hand and he was going to go back. He started going. He wasn't supposed to mess with stuff so he'd look at you and be like, you want to tell me to stop?
I said, you better quit. And then he looked and went, pfft. So he'd go touch as much as he possibly could before I got there. It's just a different looking spot on the wall that I told him he couldn't touch. He didn't know anything about it. It just looks a little different and he's not allowed to touch it so he'd probably should touch it as much as he possibly can.
And that's been us. What did I say? I don't go to the best spot to be. We just had trespassed as much as we possibly can and then at some point, for those of you who were in the church, for those of you who were Christians, there was a moment when it dawned on you with that. When it clipped in your brain, oh no, I'm going to face the godly universe and all I've ever done is run past every boundary I've set up and acting like those boundaries were an affront to my freedom and acting like he had himned me in with nonsense that Jesus Christ through his blood offers us the forgiveness of our trespasses that all of our former debt is gone to be covered by his blood for free. says this, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight.
According to the riches of the he redeemed us through his blood and forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, I have not, I've lived a life where you could use the word comfortable pretty easily to describe my life. Like in general growing up I've just been kind of comfortable and life's been really comfortable. You couldn't use the word lavish though. You just wouldn't describe most of my life as lavish. I'm just willing to bet that's true for all of us that the word lavish there, it means it's overdone. You ever seen anything and you just thought this is lavish?
It's a little too much. It's a little too big, a little too clean, a little too shiny, a little too nice. It's like lavish. It's like whoa. Don't miss what you just said about the salvation of God in Christ. There's some of us in this room who believe the lie that you got in on a technicality or that you barely skirted through before the door closed.
Or that God saves other people because he loves them but you he tolerates. It's not true. He was rich in grace and he lavished it upon the church. He was rich in grace and he lavished it on. Don't look at God and act like he was stinty with his grace. He over did.
You say well I've sinned really like I've done this. Yeah. look at the cross look at that. The son of God would die and shed his blood for you. He has lavish grace on you. You've been paid for. My wife and I got married and someone of the family paid for us to go to Samles which is an all inclusive resort and it was weird the first day and I had to pay for this and it was not weird any day after.
He fell here at first. After that I was like cheeseburger please. The church ought to have a little bit of slatter when it comes to the grace that God has offered us. Not because we've done anything but because his grace is so pitch and so lavish that our sin can't get to us, can't wear us down, can't make us feel guilty and shame anymore. That we repent and be rescued, lavish, overpaid grace. The bill's already been paid.
God's taken it all from us. We're free. So, we have redemption through his blood, we brought out slavery, we have forgiven our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things in earth. So, he also revealed to us the mystery of his will that we would know the gospel, that we would understand that Jesus Christ died for us so that we could be saved. That the mystery of God's will has been revealed to us, sent forth in Christ, so that God could unite all things to himself.
Things in heaven and things in heaven. Verse 11. in him we have an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. Let's read that again. In him we have obtained inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. We have an inheritance. That word here in the Greek can easily mean that we have an inheritance or we've been made into a heritage.
Having an inheritance means that because we've been brought into the family, we get all of the good stuff. We've been brought in, we're a co-heir, we have an inheritance of God, we'll be brought into heaven and it's like, oh, this is ours. And to be made a heritage means that he intentionally put on the greatness of his goodness on display in the church. He said, this is what I'm going to Mark the world with so that people know what I'm like. And either way, it works out the same. If we're a heritage, we've given an inheritance and if we're given an inheritance, he's made us into an inheritance, he's claimed us with his name.
But the blessing there is that we receive everything from him. We've been given an inheritance because God works everything according to the counsel of his will. Verse 12, So that we who are the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. So what Paul says is, we who are the first to hope in Christ are to the praise of his glory, and you also, when you heard the word of truth and you believed in the gospel, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we get possession of it.
So he looks at the Ephesians and says, isn't it just for us, it's for you. It's the same for us, it's not just for them, it's for us, it's for everyone who heard the word of truth, the gospel, and believed in it. So when we heard that Jesus Christ died for our sins and placed our faith in him, he saved us. And when that happens, he says we're sealed by the Holy Spirit. That the Holy Spirit came and grabbed you when you believed the gospel and said, I'm not letting go, I'm your guarantee until you acquire possession of the inheritance. That God has chosen to bless you in Christ and I'm not letting that fall apart, I'm not letting that get away, the Holy Spirit came and claimed us and made us his and said, I'll hear you through the finish.
We've been sealed by the promise of the Spirit. Okay. Real quick, let's recap. What did he say? Some people have been blessed with a spiritual blessing in the heavenly places and then he just listed these things off. I'm going to put it on the screen so you can see it all together.
We were chosen to be holy and blameless. We were adopted in love. We were redeemed from slavery. We were forgiven of our sins. He revealed to us the mystery of the gospel. We were given an inheritance and we were sealed by the Holy Spirit.
All of that's going to work out because the Holy Spirit's going to work it out in us as we've had faith in Jesus. Paul says all that without taking a break. He says this is what the gospel is. So if you're a Christian in the room, I hope that doesn't acknowledge you. And if you're not a Christian in the room, I hope you see that as an temptation. That Christ is love that gives us to be abide by them.
They love the source that can be guided for us so that we can obtain that, so that we can be brought in. I'll leave that up for a second. What do we do with that? How are we supposed to respond? He tells us in the text. He starts off by saying bless me.
He ends up to the praise of his glory. Throughout the day he says to the praise of his glory is grace, to the praise of his glory. And God did all of this for his praise. Now, we can praise things that we don't enjoy. praise. I can say Kentucky Wildcats played a good game yesterday. Their quarterback is fast.
I did not enjoy any of that. I can just acknowledge it. It's more of an acknowledgement than it is praise. I'm saying something nice, but I don't really feel it. The true, genuine praise, true, genuine, it's the culmination of true, genuine enjoyment, satisfaction, and fulfillment. So what he's saying is, here's how good God is, and here's our response.
Does everybody have a chance who wants to write that down? Do you write that down? It's also going to be good. So we praise God for what he's done through Christ for us. That's it. That's our response.
We praise God for what he's done through Christ for us. I have not been to the Grand Canyon, but I think I hit the point. I've been to the ocean. I think it's a similar point. I think the ocean probably a little bit more. You can participate.
I guess the Grand Canyon you can hike. I think in some ways the point of the Grand Canyon is the same point of the solar eclipse we just had. Why people enjoy it. Why people appreciate it. I'm skeptical about most things. I thought the solar eclipse would probably be an upper height.
But I was going to look at it. I'm not that cool. I was going to make sure the pain is a good issue. So the sun, the moon, the whatever, the sun disappears behind the moon. There's that shining little yellow thing. And I was by myself.
The first thing I said was, oh, yeah, that's cool. Like, you bested me. We did each other. Sorry. I said immunity to us. That's cool.
Now, if you were watching it with someone else and the person next to you, right when that happened, what do we do with it? What's the point? You're like, look at it. What's happening to me? I'm having an experience here. If you're standing in the Grand Canyon, you're just trying to soak it in.
Someone said, what do we do? What's the, you've missed it. What he just said was, here's what God has done through Christ for us. And he did it. What do we do? We acknowledge it.
And when we truly acknowledge it, we're overwhelmed with praise for his glory. Thank you. That love and that big and that good and that generous and that rich. There's a song we'll sing every once in a while. I think we'll have it on our playlist. And it says, when I first met you, I didn't know you were a king.
I didn't know you were that rich. It's just like the more I've gotten to know you, the more gracious you've become, the more rich you've become, the more generous we've been. I'm starting to understand that my proper, appropriate place is to enjoy you, to magnify you, to glorify you. That we would just be caught up in how good he is. And that's where true joy and satisfaction comes. that God's glory and our enjoyment, our satisfaction are woven together. that. If I cooked you a meal, the more glorious the meal, the more enjoyment and satisfaction you receive.
They're woven together. the greater it is, the more overwhelmed you are. A county fair is fine. State fair is better. Carolines is better than that. You've got Disney World. The greater, the more depth to it, the more richness, the more overwhelming it is, the more joy and satisfaction is found in it.
And that's what God is. He's glorious beyond compare. And he accomplishes all of this for us in salvation. And the point of it, the purpose of it, the correct consummation, the right end of it, is that we would just be thankful and acknowledge. Now, that is good news. We don't gather on Sundays.
We don't go through the Bible and see that what Paul said was, here's what God needs you to do for him. Here's how good you need to be. Here's how more you need to be. He doesn't need to be. He doesn't need to follow the hand. He doesn't say that.
He doesn't start there. He doesn't say, here's what we do. He says, here's what God has done. Here's who he is. Here's what he's done through Christ for us. This is good news about what he's accomplished for us, not what we have to accomplish for him.
And that makes way more sense because why would he do this to accomplish anything? We are small and new and our God is big and glorious and rich. He has accomplished everything for us. He says where Paul starts. He goes to write a letter. He says, and in one sentence, here's what God has done through Christ for us.
And then from there, he's going to say, now here's how people respond. We praise his glorious grace. We acknowledge and we're overwhelmed by it. We just say, wow. And then he says, and everything else flows out of it. That's why we say we're going to be a gospel-centered community on mission because we believe you have to get gospel-centered first.
You have to know Jesus first. You have to have to go work in you first before you can move on to anything else. The gospel has to be real. One of the things that we talk about periodically is if our church isn't on mission, we're not actually trying to see other people meet Jesus and we've forgotten this. But when we believe that that's true, that that's what Jesus does for us, we want everybody to do that.
When we're not loving each other well, we're not existing like families, it's because we've forgotten how good Jesus is. This is the launching place for everything else. And it's the launching place for the joy in our life, the satisfaction in our life, that we can just enjoy God and be filled up with him. Everything else, when you shared the clips for a while, everything else just kind of looked stupid for a little bit. And I walked back to my house and I was like, okay, everything else is so good a little over here today because that was really cool. And I have to say that because it bested me.
I didn't think it was good for me. I have to tell you, I was cool. You got a grocery store full? You got a grocery store hungry? You got a grocery store hungry late at night? Do you know how much stuff you convince yourself the future you will be?
I'm just like, I'm kicking things out for my car ride. That's how bad it is. I'm going to eat that. I'm going to cook this. And then tomorrow, oh, I love that. And most of it's like microwave stuff because I'm not thinking well.
It's like, I don't want to have to cook something. That would take forever. hot pockets. Because groceries are full and everything looks the way it's supposed to. Hot pockets do not look good when you are full. And you know what we guys would call after? I'm going to go to other things.
When we're filled up and satisfied in Jesus, everything else gets to just be what it is. Money doesn't have to ruin our souls anymore. It's just money. We can be having relationship issues and it hurts and it's hard, but it doesn't rob us of everything good in the world. It doesn't completely bottom us out because we're filled with Jesus and everything else gets to just be what it is. But when our community groups struggle or we're hurting or we're not getting along with some people in our church family, we go to work on it to make it better because Jesus is filling us up.
We know that he forgave us, that he redeemed us, that he's at work in our sin, that he's paying for our sin, he's paying for their sins so that we can actually forgive and work us out. When Jesus is praised and his glory is held up, everything else makes sense, works out, and looks right. That's why Paul starts here and then says everything else comes out of that. So I would just invite you today. to stare at this. Hold this in your head as long as you can and actively work to be overwhelmed by it. If you're a Christian here today and we talked through this and there wasn't something you used to know, you weren't just reminding him how rich and how glorious he really is, I would just encourage you to spend some time staring at it.
If you're here today, you're not a Christian. this is what is offered to the church. We're not here to help you become a better person. We're here so that you can have all your sin be forgiven and you can be made blameless by Jesus. Nobody here, they invite you, their friends aren't going to be satisfied until you are as cured and as blameless as Jesus and that won't happen by what you do, it won't happen by what you do. So we gather and gather together to celebrate.
Here's what God has done through Christ for us. God's praise him. If you're not a Christian, what he said was when you heard the word truth, the gospel, and believed in him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. So if you're not a Christian, I would advise you to believe in Jesus, to believe that he's the one who's accomplished this for you through his blood, to believe that he's the one who's done this through the cross. And the Christian's in the room, Yama's going to sing for a minute, but we're just going to try to meditate on what he's accomplished with. She's going to sing, we're just going to think about how good he is.
We need to hold your Bible up, and we need to read this passage a couple times. We need to talk to him about how good it is to be adopted. We're just going to try to hold this in our minds for a minute. And then in a minute, she's going to invite us to stand and sing together. We'll respond to what Paul says we're supposed to. We'll praise his glory.
We'll just share that and sing. You're good, you're generous, and we love you. Because our response is to be grateful. So let's pray. Holy Spirit, we ask that you can empower our grace. It wouldn't be begrudging and acknowledgement, but it wouldn't be overwhelming how good you have been to us, how generous you have been, and we would just be grateful.
No promises to accomplish something. No, I'm going to get better, no, I'm going to prove myself though. You won't be sorry you did this. We'll just acknowledge that you were rich in grace and you lavished it on us. Respond. Grateful and saved.
Thank you. In Jesus' name.
