Dead in Sin

Dead in Sin

Spencer Clay

Transcript

Good morning. My name is Spencer. I'm a pastor in training here with Mill City Church. We're going to be in Ephesians 2, so we made it into chapter 2. We're going to be in verses 1 through 5. We're mostly going to be in the first three verses.

If you have a Bible, I encourage you to open it. We're going to sit in that and just walk through that. If you don't have a Bible, there's a white Bible probably in the seat next to you. We're going to be on page 568. If you don't have a Bible, please take that home. That is our gift to you.

All right, so it was like three or four weeks ago I was preaching, and I tipped this story just briefly. I want to walk more in-depth in it. It is the story of how my stepdad first watched my brother and I. And so basically, my brother, who's kind of, he was five, I was four. I don't really have a really good memory of this. I have it mostly through my stepdad and my brother, so I can kind of write in some of the details here.

But my brother was kind of the ringleader of trouble for the two of us. And he schemed the first time that my stepdad was going to watch us. My mom went to the grocery store. She left us with him. And he schemed and said, well, we should eliminate the threat. Let's stone him.

So that was the plan. I just followed suit. We're going to stone him with rocks. And we're going to see how it plays out. Now, there's some things in context to understand here. Firstly, I didn't really, before then, I don't think I'd been spanked.

I'm not really sure. I don't think that, and the other thing was, is that my stepdad came from a family of spanking. So what my brother had not factored into is there might be retribution for our actions. So we pick up rocks. We start laying into them, calling them every name we can, throwing the book at them. And then we bolt.

So we had not anticipated that he might come after us. So my brother was older than me. At that point, he was faster than me. And I got caught first. And I was spanked. And I don't think I'd ever been spanked like that before.

And I act like I've been murdered. I was in tears. My brother turns around, sees the carnage, and says, at least I'm faster. So he gets upstairs. He makes it to my mother's bed. He goes under the bed.

And my stepdad goes, pulls him out from under the bed, and spanks him. And sits us both in front of him. And basically gives us a speech of how this is not going to go down the way you think it is. At that point, we realized there's a new sheriff in town. Like, this wasn't going to fly. Now, there's a couple things that stand out from that story.

Firstly, was that crazy? Or was it brilliant? Brilliant. Yes. It was both. Like, we laugh about it now.

But that's crazy. Like, the first time you're actually watching someone's kids that you're dating, you spanked them. Like, you may think that's normal. I think that's a little crazy. And it was brilliant. Because he'd made the point.

That wasn't going to fly. From this point forward, stoning was not going to happen in this household. They're still married. They're actually here today. They're still married. Happily married.

The discipline we received after that in the years to come was good for us. There is something really striking about that story. It's the fact that my brother and I tried to stone another human being at ages four and five. Where did we learn that? It's not like my mom read us bedtime stories as kids that had stoning in it. And then she said, you see this?

This is what has happened over the last centuries and millennia. People have stoned other people as his approval. It is a form of capital punishment. No, we like invented a form of capital punishment on the fly. I mean, where did that come from? I see that in my own kids.

Like, we have a two-year-old. And there's actually in our church, we have a lot of ages one to three. And when they get together, part of it's like really cool. It's like, man, our kids are going to grow up together. They're going to hear about Jesus together. This is beautiful.

And then we turn our backs. And it turns into the Lord of the Flies. They start biting and stealing. Then you ask them what went wrong and they start lying. Who taught them that? Who taught them to lie?

Who taught them to steal? Who taught them to bite? Who taught them to act like complete anarchists? Those are questions that our culture is uncomfortable asking. But the Bible has a clear answer for.

It comes from within. That is our nature. And that's what we're going to walk through in Ephesians 2, 1-5. We're mostly going to sit in 1-3. In this section, we're going to see the condition of humanity and how we come into this world. And to be honest, it's going to be a little bit uncomfortable.

It's going to be an uncomfortable look in the mirror at our own nature. But we're going to see how this makes God look good. All right. So we're going to be Ephesians 2, verses 1-5. Starting in verse 1. And you were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of our body and mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved. I'll pray and then we'll dive in. God, thank you for your word. Even difficult passages like this. I pray that we would put our swords down, that we would receive this, that you would speak through me, and that your truth would communicate a beautiful part of the gospel.

In Christ's name, amen. Alright, so he starts out, verse 1. And you were dead in trespasses and sins. Alright, so the way that this sentence is structured is that that phrase, and you were dead in trespasses and sins, that is the thesis statement for the next three verses. Everything that follows in the next three verses is going to be a further unpacking of that statement. So to understand this statement a little bit better, we need a little bit of context.

The context of this goes all the way back to the garden. All the way back to Genesis 1, 2, and 3, when God created the world. God created the world, and he created Adam and Eve. And it was good. It was, he gave them the garden that they might enjoy, that they might use their creativity and their gifts as made in the image of God to help make this garden better. And he said, you can enjoy all of this, but this tree over here, this tree of knowledge and good and evil, avoid it.

Don't eat of this tree. Everything else I've given you, you can enjoy. Just trust me, trust my word. Avoid this tree, do not eat of it. And he says in Genesis 2, 16, for in that day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. So, Genesis 3, Satan comes in the form of a serpent and comes and causes them to question God's word, question his goodness, question his character.

And they trust Satan's word over God, and they eat of the tree. Now, when you're reading it, you might be wondering, if you're just reading through, wait a second, God said that they would die. They just ate of it. They don't die. In fact, they live a long time after that. Like, what actually happens there?

So, there's two things that happen. Firstly, physical death is actually introduced to the world. When that happens, it affects all of creation. There is a time clock for everyone and everything at that point. So, they are going to die one day. From dust, they were created.

From dust, they will return. So, that is one thing. Physical death is introduced. But also, they spiritually died in that moment. There was spiritual death that happened. And that, they did this on behalf of the world, because what follows after that is what we see in Romans 5.12, which says, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.

So, from that event, all, everyone, all of us who come from Adam and Eve inherit spiritual deadness. Which means that you're not actually born a Christian. That's somewhat of an understanding of that here in our culture, that you're born a Christian because you're born in a Christian family, or you grew up going to church. And that's not what it says here. It says that you were born spiritually dead. Now, I wanted to double check this to make sure that dead meant what it really meant.

So, I went back and looked at the original language, looked at a definition for it. And the definition I got said to, it says, being so morally or spiritually deficient as to be, in effect, dead. Comma, dead. And they wanted to really make it clear. So, morally and spiritually deficient, absolutely dead. This is not, you show up to the ER, and you just need a little resuscitation.

Like, I watched ER in the 90s, and it seemed like every show, someone was to end up on the table, CPR, resuscitation, they were brought back. This is not that picture. This is like CSI, or Bones, or Law and Order, or whatever show where they are absolutely dead. Spiritually, absolutely dead. Now, Paul further unpacks this in the following verses that come after it. So, he goes in verse 1, And you were dead in trespasses and sins, and then here is the further unpacking, In which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

So, Paul describes spiritual deadness in three ways. And if you've been here long enough, this is going to sound familiar. He says, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, that's the devil, and following your flesh, the passions of your flesh. We say the flesh, the world, the devil. And Paul has a different order here. He says, the world, the devil, your flesh.

The rest of our time today is going to be walking through that, is unpacking what that looks like. All right, so he starts out, In which you once walked, following the course of this world. Spiritually dead people follow the course of the world. That is our nature. This is just practical human nature. They do social conformity experiments all the time.

And to test, how do people actually follow the crowd? And there's some that are really funny, and there's some that are actually really, really dark. One of the funny ones that I saw recently, I watched this video. This video is from a show called Brain Games. And basically, they put these actors in a doctor's office. And they're sitting in a doctor's office waiting room.

And then a person, a test subject, she comes in, and she sits down. And then a bell is rung. And all the actors stand up. And she looks around like, what's going on? They sit back down. Bell rings again.

They stand up. And you can tell she's starting to get uncomfortable. And they sit back down. By the third bell ring, she stands up with them. She had to go with the crowd. And then they do it over and over again until they start taking people out of the room.

The actors go to see the doctor. They leave the room. And it's just her by herself. And they ring the bell. And she stands up. And she sits back down.

Then other people come in. Just random people walk in. This guy walks in. He sits down beside her. They ring the bell. She stands up.

Sits back down. And he looks at her and goes, what are you doing? And she's like, I don't know. I just, there are people in the room. And they're just, they're standing. And I think we're supposed to be standing when the bell's rung.

Next bell rung. They both stand up. And one by one, they bring people into the room. And each one of them does the same thing. They look around for a second. And they all start standing up.

That's our nature. We follow the crowd. That's a part of our fallen human nature. Now, the way that plays out in everyday life is maybe you work at an office where there's always like one person in your office that's just obnoxious or annoying or frustrating. And everyone has that in their office. And everyone, it's just easy to make fun of them.

It's easy to crack jokes when they're gone. It's easy to slander them. It's easy to gossip about them. You're like, I don't have that person in my office. Think about it. I heard this radio commercial recently that said everyone's got a Dave in their office.

And they just made the point about, like, don't hire a Dave. Use our hiring service. You have a Dave in your office. And they're just easy to make fun of. And what happens? Everyone starts piling on.

And then finally you start joining in. Because you follow the crowd. It's our nature. This happens even in the church, I see, when it comes to watching TV and movies. Please. Like, we shouldn't watch as Christians everything that comes on TV.

Everything that comes on Netflix. Everything that comes on HBO. Every movie that gets released. We should use discernment. Now, I'm not saying you just watch VeggieTales on PBS. All right?

I think there's a lot of value in being discerning and looking at art and how different artists and different musicians and different filmmakers do things. I think there's a lot of value in that. But it doesn't mean you get to watch every single thing because everything you watch is not going to be good for your soul. It's not going to be edifying. And what I see happens is when one of those shows is a little bit edgy and everyone's watching it. What do you do?

You want to see if anyone else is watching it. Is anybody else watching? Are our church watching? Does somebody else in our community watch it? You get on Facebook when it comes out. And it's like, oh, everyone else is watching it.

I feel a little bit justified. I can watch it too. We justify our actions by following the crowd. This happens in practical things like cheating on your taxes, which almost happens seemingly universally in our culture. Everyone likes to point at the top 1% on Wall Street, shifting money around, moving stuff around, hiding money from the government. But I used to wait tables.

I used to serve coffee in the service industry. What is common in the service industry? You don't report cash tips. They don't track that. You don't have to report your cash earnings. That's cheating the government.

And Jesus says, pay to Caesar what is Caesar's. It was funny because I used to listen to people who would rail on the 1%. I'm like, but you do the same thing. You just do it on a much smaller scale. We follow the government. And what happens is when new people come into a job like that, someone, you don't have to report your cash earnings.

You're good. And it's like, oh, okay, we're good. We justify our actions. We follow the crowd. And I could keep going down that list. And you may be thinking, nah, I'm different.

Now, you don't know me. I'm a nonconformist. I walk in that doctor's office. I'm sitting down. I ain't standing up. You may think, oh, no, I wouldn't make fun of Dave.

I wouldn't do any of those things. I don't conform. And that's a little bit of my heart when I hear stuff like that. I like to think I wouldn't conform. And I could go down the list and you might combat everyone. And here's what I'd say.

I think that you have misunderstood and underestimated how much the world has influenced your views on money, on power, on sex. I think that you've really misunderstood and you've underestimated how much the world has shaped your views. And honestly, you might be a little bit self-righteous to think that you are that much better than everyone else that you would not conform. But that is our nature. We conform to the world. So Paul makes that point.

Following the course of this world. And then he gets to the next part. Following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. All right, so here's where Paul starts to get offensive and he starts to step on toes. He says, you follow the course of this world and you follow the devil, the prince, the power of the air. That's who he's talking about there.

Now, in order to understand this, we need a little bit of context to understand who our enemy is. He's referred to as the devil. He's referred to as Satan. Satan comes from the Hebrew word for adversary. He's also called the tempter, the evil one, the accuser, the father of lies. And there's he has all kinds of names.

We look at Isaiah 14 and we have reasonably from that in a passage in Ezekiel that Satan was once an angel of God and that he wanted to be like God, rebelled against God with other angels and was cast down into the earth. And those angels became demons. And from that, ever since, his whole goal has been to undermine God's rule, to undermine God's reign and destroy the fabric of God's creation. That's been his role. And Adam and Eve, when they sinned against God, what they did was they joined forces with the devil, trusting his word and his ways over God. And they became sons of disobedience.

And we have inherited that same sons of disobedience, seeking to defy the king, the ruler of the universe. We became sons of disobedience. And that is the story of Eden playing out over and over and over again. And here's the deal. There's no neutral ground. The Bible makes it clear.

You're either a child of God or you're a child of the devil. Now, when the Bible says that, culture goes, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, I heard we are all children of God. I've always heard that. I think I heard Michael Jackson sing that once. We are all children of God.

And Paul says, no, no, no. You were born as sons of disobedience. Or in the end of verse 3, he says, children of wrath. Or as Jesus says in John 8, like your father, the devil. So we need adopting out of that family.

That's why when we started this series, we started in chapter 1 and verse 5, the picture of adopted as sons points to this right here. You are adopted out of the family of Satan into the family of God. And that's one of the reasons why I love adoption so much. I came from a church before this that there's a lot of adopting going on. And I think of one specific instance where this family adopted this girl. She was given up for adoption as a young baby.

Ended up in the foster system. It was eventually adopted by this family. Not the family from my church, another family. And that family was a bad family. And they, like they wouldn't let her, they would take their kids they had the old fashioned way. They'd take those kids to Disney World and they'd leave her behind.

Just making the case, you're not like our other children. And so she inherited through the foster system, through this family. She inherited all kinds of bad habits and all kinds of problems. And then this family in our church adopted them. Adopted her. And they adopted her and the first thing this dad did was he looked at her and he said, You are my forever child.

This is your forever family. You're not going anywhere. Pack your bags. We're going to Disney World. All of our kids go to Disney World. So they took her to Disney World.

And you think that story would have had a magic like bow wrapped at Disney World. No. That trip was all, it was, it was rough. She acted out. She was frustrated. And she had reason to be because she inherited all these bad habits, all these bad things from these former families.

And then over the next year, they started to unpack the gospel with her. And one of the coolest things that I've ever seen was when she got baptized. Her dad baptized her. And I got to hear her testimony read. And she connected the dots that she'd been adopted out of a bad situation, out of a bad family, into this new family. And how that was a reflection of the gospel.

It's one of the coolest things I've ever gotten to see. Because with a new family comes new ways, comes new joys. And that's God's appeal through Ephesians, through the scriptures. That you be adopted into his family. Because his family is better. And with his family comes new ways that are better.

And sure, you bring some baggage with you. That's honestly one of the reasons that I love our church so much. I love our church so much because many of you have professed Jesus in the last couple years. And have been brought into this family. And you might come in on a Sunday. And you might hear someone drop an F-bomb.

Or get in an argument about something. Or like hear a vulgar joke that you might not hear in a church that's all well put together on the outside. And we have people from other churches that come from well put together on the outside churches. They come in here and I feel like they get a little bit uncomfortable. Now, we should grow in maturity. We should correct those things.

But I love the rawness of our church. Because it shows that people are being adopted out of this. That every person that we baptize. And we're going to celebrate baptism next week. Every person we baptize is one more person that we're celebrating. They're not in the family of Satan anymore.

They're in the family of God. And that is why I love being here. So Satan has a grip on those who are dead. And then Paul walks into our sin nature. So verse 2.

The spirit does not work in the sons of disobedience. He transitions to verse 3. Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh. Carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. Spiritually dead people carry out their desires of their flesh. I mean, there's a lot of parallels to zombies.

Like, I love zombie movies and TV shows. I just do. Like, I think part of it is because they're really basic. Like, zombies, they wander, they eat people. Like, that's a pretty easy enemy to figure out. They wander, they eat people.

In some movies and TV shows, they're faster. In some, they're slower. But basically, that's what they do. They made this one movie once where the zombie fell in love with a human. And their heart changed. And everyone hated it.

And it was terrible. And no one, and it lost lots of money. Because we don't want our zombies to do that. We want them to wander and eat people. It's really basic. It's really simple.

And that's why we love to show the walking dead. I mean, they wander, they eat people. There may be complex storylines that happen on the outside. But the zombies are pretty common. They're just walking dead, fulfilling their nature. And the picture that Paul paints here is that we were all once walking dead.

We were. I mean, we're just a little more complex. Zombies wander and eat people. We have a lot more complex things going on in our nature that we default to. Like stealing. Like lying.

Hurting other people. Lust. Pride. That is why when you leave kids in a room by themselves, it quickly falls apart. Because left to their own nature, that's what they do. And when I hear a common pushback on that, part of me goes, Well, do you have kids?

Have you seen them in action? This is what they do. This is also why when anarchy happens in other cultures, when the government breaks down, some of the worst atrocities in human history happen. You think of Rwanda. 500,000 people. Genocide.

You think of Sudan. Close to a million people dying. You think of when the UK quickly pulled out of Pakistan and India, split the country just rudely across a line, and a million people killed each other. When the government breaks down, anarchy happens. And so mass rape, mass murder, some of the worst things happen. Now, some people in our culture might say, but those are foreign cultures.

We in Western culture, we wouldn't do that. Paul's got a word for you in Ephesians 2. We're going to get to prejudice and racism coming up. But at this point, it's important to know. I mean, just plug. Watch The Walking Dead.

You don't have to watch the whole show. My wife doesn't like it. Watch The Walking Dead. When society breaks down, even in American culture, we'll do the worst things. It happens when you're alone at your house, and no one's watching, and you've got your phone out, and you're scrolling, and you click on a video link, and you watch another video, and you keep scrolling through porn. Your flesh says, nah, just keep going.

Just do it. No one's watching. No one's here. Just do it. It happens when you're alone in your thoughts. Think of the thoughts that go through your head, and think of where those come from.

Think of when you might compare yourself to others and think, man, I think I'm honestly just better than them. I think I'm honestly just better than my spouse. I think I'm honest. Or how we manipulate situations in our head. If I do get this person to do this, and get this person to do that, and they follow this, then the situation works out in my favor. You can go on and on down the list, left to our own devices, left to our own thoughts.

That's what we do. I mean, even our good deeds are corrupted by selfish motives. Like you give to an online cause nowadays, what happens when the money clears? A little box pops up and says, would you like to share this? On Facebook? On Twitter?

On Instagram? Or if they're annoying, on Google Plus? Because nobody uses Google Plus. And they want you to share it. And you first look at it, and you're like, ah, that seems really self-centered. I'm not going to share this.

And then you think about it, and you're like, wait a second. It's about the children. And you know what? How are people going to know about this cause if I don't share it? It's about the children. It would be morally wrong for me not to share this.

No, people need to know that I gave to this. They need to click. I'm a good person. I mean, philanthropic organizations, they know that most of the giving is about yourself. I mean, that's why you can't go to a college or a school that doesn't have a building named after it. People don't just give to that.

They've got to have their name attached to it. Even our good motives are tainted by selfish ambition. And you may think as we've walked through some of this that, man, this cannot be that big of a deal. And I'd say the Bible says that you've severely underestimated your sin. The Bible says that our sin is cosmic treason against the king of the universe. And it earns us death, and it earns us hell.

And the reason why we don't take it seriously is because we have our flesh saying, no, it's not that big of a deal. The world is saying, no, this isn't that big of a deal. Satan is whispering into our hearts, no, it's not that big of a deal. And Paul is saying it's absolutely a huge deal. At this point, you're like, man, Paul, I like chapter 1. It was encouraging.

You flip to chapter 2, and Paul is a downer. He is negative. Like, what? And then he, like, doubles down on it in verse 3. He goes, and we're by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. And you're like, man.

Even in Romans 3, he makes the point in verses 10 through 12. He says, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside.

Together they've become worthless. No one does good. Not even one. And he makes the point, if you think you're put together, if you think you're killing it, that you're crushing life, you're not. You were all jacked up. You're all by nature children of wrath.

That's humanity. That's what it means to be humane. Like, when I hear people in this political, crazy season that we're in, when I hear people from the left call out the right and say, that person's inhumane. Where's the humanity in their speech? Where's the humanity in their position? I hear people from the right going, where's the humanity in their positions in the way they vote?

I'm looking back and I'm like, this is humanity. This is humane. This craziness, when the fabric of political correctness or whatever was holding our culture together before ends, this is humanity. This is who we are. Left to our own devices. This is what we do.

And it's a bleak picture that Paul paints here. I mean, think of everything that he's got here that is stacked against us. I want you to just take a second and absorb this. That we come into this world with a sinful nature that seeks to rebel against the God of the universe. That you come into this world as a conformist. Conforming to the patterns of this world.

Conforming to the ways of rebelling against God. Conforming to the people. Conforming to the people. Conforming to the people. Conforming to the people. That you come into this world as a son of disobedience.

As a daughter of disobedience. And the family of the evil one. That is a bleak picture of what we come into. And then Paul says, but. Verse 4. But God.

Being rich in mercy. Because of the great love with which he loved us. Even when we were dead in our trespasses. Made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. And he comes in with the good news of the gospel.

But God. Who is rich in mercy. Who is rich in kindness. Who is rich in grace. Because of his love. Not our own.

Because of his love. Made us alive. Made us alive. Together with Christ. Together with the one. Who came into this world.

And did not follow the patterns of this world. Who was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights by Satan. When Satan was attempting to father him. And bring them into his family. He said no. My father's ways are better.

And he took that record of perfection to the cross. Where his flesh was ripped open. Where his body was broken. And where he was placed in an empty tomb. And when he resurrected from the grave. What happened was.

He made a way for us to be made alive. For the first time. To be made alive. That he hindered the power of Satan and his kingdom. Bringing it to his knees. That he made a way for us to be alive.

And the picture that follows. Is that God comes in. And he scoops us out of our mess. He brings us out of death. And brings us into his family. And makes us alive.

And gives us a perfect righteous standing before him. This isn't a picture of. We do some good works. We meet God halfway. No. He brings the dead to life.

Which means we have a new picture here. That God made us alive. So if you are in Christ. If you trust in him as your only hope. You're no longer dead in sin. You're made alive in Christ.

You no longer have to be a conformist. And follow the world. No. Like you can follow Jesus. That you're no longer a son of disobedience. That you're a child of the most high king.

That you're no longer a slave to your flesh. Obeying it. As that is your master. No. We have a new master. Who is much better.

And we have the freedom to say no to sin. And to say yes to Jesus. So. For believers. Verse 1 through 3. Is a picture of who you were.

It's not a picture of who you are. Now we still carry the stain of sinful flesh. And we're still going to struggle. We're not yet perfect at all. But that is not.

That was a picture of who you were. And we have a new picture of who we are. That we are made alive. Now I'll close with this. If you think. That you've been made alive.

By anything else other. Than belief in the finished work. Of what Jesus has done for us. Like if you came in today thinking that. I'm a Christian. Because I was born to a Christian family.

I'm part of a Christian culture. I've been in church my whole life. If you came in today thinking that. I think that. I get to God by being a good person. By living a good life.

By doing good things. And I'm going to be okay. Paul's message for you here. Is that if that's your understanding. Of the gospel. You are probably still dead in sin.

And the appeal that he makes. Is being made alive. Coming to this family. It is much better. Be made alive. Band's going to come up.

And they're going to close us. In a song. We're going to sing about the cross. And the cross is where this journey begins. The cross is where Jesus went. To die for us.

So that we could be made alive. And as we sing this song. Just take a moment. To ask God. Do I actually believe this? Do I actually believe.

That I'm made alive solely by Christ? Or if I believe. And place my faith. And other things. And our hope for you today. Is that you would see that Jesus is better.

That God's family is better. That you would trust in him. And from this day forward. You'd be alive. Let's pray.

God thank you. That though this picture is bleak. That we have so much. Staffed against us. That you didn't leave us there. That you didn't leave us in our sin.

That you did not leave us dead. That you came. God I pray. That we would believe that as a church. I pray. That if anyone.

Is feeling the weight of conviction. About that. That they might believe today. And be made alive. Amen.

Head Over All Things

Head Over All Things

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

Well, good morning. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. Grab your Bibles. Let's go to Ephesians chapter 1.

If you have one of the white Bibles that's in the row near you, it'll be page 568. If you don't own a Bible, take this one with you. It's our gift to you. We want you to have a Bible. So we are in the book of Ephesians.

It's a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote from prison to a church that he had helped get started. It's a fairly young church, and we're just walking through this letter week by week, verse by verse, and we have gotten past that first big sentence. I'm so proud of us. We're five weeks in, and we got past the big sentence. We did kind of set the stage the first week, and then the first sentence that really Paul kind of starts talking in this, is it takes up verses 3 through 14 in our Bible. So we just spent three weeks just really trying to take this sentence in and see what Paul means by it.

And it's very encouraging what he's talking about and what he's trying to explain to him. And he says basically in that sentence that God foreknew those whom he would save, that he chose us before the foundation of the world, that he predestined to adopt us as sons, that Jesus through his blood died to forgive our sins, and that when we believe in Christ, when we hear this and we believe it, the Holy Spirit seals us and guarantees that he'll carry us all the way into our inheritance. It's kind of what Paul says in that sentence. So basically what God planned, Jesus accomplished, and the Holy Spirit guarantees.

That's kind of his big main point. And then we're going to pick up today in verse 15 and continue with kind of how Paul begins to explain and continue to write to this church. So he says in verse 15, For this reason, and what he means is the stuff I just said, that one really big sentence about what God plans, Jesus accomplished, and the Holy Spirit guarantees. For this reason, and because I've heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints. So Paul's in prison, and he helped this church get started.

He was there for about three years, and then he is now either in prison in Caesarea or in Rome. We think, most people think Rome. But he was going to be in prison for about five years or so total, and then he is beheaded. So he's in prison, writing letters, and he's basically saying, hey, I've heard good things. I've heard that y'all have faith in Jesus still, and that you love all the saints. And that just means the church.

Those who've been saved by Jesus are the saints. So it's not like the Catholic understanding of like special people that have done extra things. When the Bible talks about it, it just means all those who are in Christ, who have been saved by Jesus, are saints. And so he says, I heard that you love them, that you're following Jesus still, and you have love towards all the saints. And then verse 16, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. So he's saying, I continually, as I hear about what's going on with y'all, I continue to thank God for you, and I'm remembering you in my prayers.

And then he says that, so he's about to tell us what he prays. That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of Revelation in the knowledge of him. Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know, and then he kind of says what he wants them to know. So he says, here's what I've been praying for you, and we're going to spend the majority of our time today just walking through what Paul prays for the church. And so here's what he starts off with. He says, I've been praying that the spirit of wisdom, and so that word spirit, it's capitalized in the ESV, which means that the translators who are translating this from Greek believe he's talking specifically about the Holy Spirit.

But he's saying that the spirit, and he says a spirit of wisdom and of Revelation. That's going to light up in just a second, it's going to be awesome. Spirit of wisdom and of Revelation, there you go. In the knowledge of him. So he's saying he wants in the knowledge of God, the spirit to give you wisdom and Revelation.

So Revelation means to reveal. So he says, I want in the knowledge of God, I want him to reveal knowledge to you, but not just reveal it. I also want him to give you wisdom. So the difference between knowledge and wisdom is knowledge is knowing facts, having information. Wisdom is knowing what to do with that information. Now somebody once said that knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, and wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

So there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom. So he's saying he wants both for them. He's saying I'm praying that he would reveal knowledge to you, and that it would work. That it would actually begin to apply that in your life, so that it wouldn't just be knowing information, but it would actually be wisdom that it would go to work in life. And so that's how we're going to talk about this today. We're going to say, what is his prayer for them?

What is he talking about? And then we're going to say, how does that work? How does that actually show up in life? And so he says, and you can take all the colors off of him. So he's praying that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of Revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know.

So he's praying that they would know a few things, but not just know it. He says, have the eyes of your heart enlightened. A lot of our church family, you're new to Christianity, you're new to the church. Some of y'all, maybe it's the first time you've ever hung out with a church, but some of us aren't. And we used to sing that song, open the eyes of my heart, Lord. It was biblical, you guys.

And what he's saying is, help your heart see. Help it become real. Not just something you've heard. Not just something that you can recite the facts, but it actually sinks into your heart. I have two brothers. My younger brother, so when my older brother and I were coming through, we were growing up on things like Mary Poppins, bed knobs and broomsticks.

We were watching Disney movies. So my older brother is three years older than me, then me, then I'm four years older than my youngest brother. And by the time he was like four or five, I think my parents really just started phoning in this parenting thing. They just let him graduate into some stuff that probably his favorite set of movies when he was little was Aliens, Terminator, and Jaws. And he loved Jaws. He watched that on repeat.

So we got to go. He was like four or five years old. We got to go to Universal Studios, and there was a Jaws ride at Universal Studios. And so you get on this boat, and you ride around, and then a giant animatronic shark attacks the boat. And so he'd been riding, and I had fun all day, and we're like, you want to go ride Jaws? He was like, yes, because he loves Jaws.

So he gets on the boat. He's sitting there, I think at three, four, somewhere in this zone. I can never tell how old children are, and I don't really remember how old he was at this point. But somewhere in the three to five zone. And he's sitting there, and we're riding, and all of a sudden, it starts like he's getting uncomfortable. He's on a boat, and basically the way the ride was set up is like a little tour guide was taking you around.

It was just going to show you some things, and then a shark's going to attack. And so over the radio, they're talking to this other boat, and all of a sudden, you hear him saying like, there's a giant shark, and then it gets all garbled, and then you hear it like the whole boat sinks. It's like, and he's like, uh-uh. He's hitting my mama. He's sitting next to me. He's like, we got to go.

Like, we can't. Uh-uh. And she's like, we're fine. We're fine. He's like, no, we're not fine. Did you hear the gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble?

Like, they, I don't know why. I'm three. I have to explain this to you. They drowned. Like, this isn't okay. And so the whole time, he's freaking out.

It's getting more intense. And just by, I mean, it was perfect. He just happened to be right on the section of the boat where the shark shoots out of the water, hits the side of the boat, water splashes everywhere. And this jaw shoots out, hits the boat, and my brother stands up in his chair, because it wasn't a crazy ride. He didn't have to be strapped. He stands up in his chair and goes, we're all going to die.

Tears just streaming down his face. He is losing it. My mom looks at him and goes, we are not going to die. You need to sit down and be quiet. And he was just like, okay. So he sat down.

He's like, I guess he was thinking, if she's mad at me, maybe we aren't going to die. Or maybe he just thought, I'm not getting spanked before I get eaten. Like, that's not happening. At least to have good relationships with my mom before all this goes down. He cried the rest of the ride, got off. And it took a little while.

They took him to the side, and they were like, it's a ride, just like all the other things we've been doing. That wasn't a real shark. And then at some point it clicked. And he was like, and he rode it like four more times. Like, made them spend the rest of their day in that line at that ride. Like, that was what happened.

And he loved it. It was his favorite ride. And it went from, before he got on, he understood the concept of ride. But it was like, as soon as everything got messed up, it was like, we're all going to die. Like, this is. And then it clicked.

It locked into place. And he was actually free then to kind of, and that's what Paul's praying. He's saying, I want you to not just know it, but I want it to sink into your heart to be a substantial reality. I want this to be a settled reality in your heart. That you don't just know the information, but that you know it. That it's real to you.

That's Paul's prayer. And so, before we start reading what Paul prays, I want us to take a second. And if you're a Christian in here this morning, he is writing to the church, to those who believe in Jesus. And so I just, if you're a Christian, I want you to take a second to just ask, Lord, help my heart see this. Open the eyes of my heart that they would be enlightened to see this truth, that it would become real to me. And if you're in here this morning and you're not a believer, and that's fine.

We have a lot of people that hang out with us on a regular basis that are just kind of checking us out, or you're just friends with somebody, and they've asked you 37 times. So you're like, look, if you will leave me the heck alone, I will show up. That's fine. I would invite you to pray the same thing. To just say, help me see this, if this is real, if this is true. If it is true, it's something you actually want to see, you actually want to know.

But if not, if you don't want to pray that, that's fine. Just sit for just a second. But we're going to pray this together. So I want to give you just a second to ask the Lord to help you see this as we read this this morning. And then I'll pray and we'll keep going. Father, we ask that Paul's prayer for the church in Ephesus would be answered for us.

Would you give us a spirit of wisdom and Revelation in the knowledge of you. That you would enlighten our hearts. That we might see this. So it becomes a settled reality for us. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Look at verses back half of 18 and 19. So he says this. He says, Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you. What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints? And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe? So those are the things he's saying.

I pray that you would know what, what, what. So we're going to look at those three things. And we're going to basically follow this idea of knowledge and wisdom. So we're going to say, what does it mean? What's he actually talking about? And then, how does that apply?

How does that work? And really the way we're going to ask that is, what is at stake if we don't believe that? That doesn't become real to us. What do we lose? What do we miss out on? What happens in our lives?

So he says, I want you to know, the first one, what is the hope to which he has called you? I want you to know the hope to which he has called you. Now, in the Bible they use the word hope kind of the same way we do. There's really two kind of definitions. They use the idea of like an uncertain hope. So Paul in Philippians says, I hope to send Timothy to you soon.

He says that a couple times in Philippians. Basically saying like, I hope this works out. I don't really know. Like, I don't know if that's actually what's going to happen. But I hope that happens.

We use hope that way a lot. It's Ted's birthday. I hope there's cake. You're like, I hope it's chocolate. Like that. Like we use it like, if you ask me, are the Gamecocks going to win this weekend?

I would say, I hope so. I have no clue. Because sometimes they look like they're good and most of the times they don't. I've been a Gamecock fan long enough. Sometimes I don't even say I hope so. I just say probably not.

Go ahead and get my little heart ready for that. Then there's the Bible uses the word hope as like a certain hope. Like an expectant certain hope. That there's a confident hope. And so we'll see that in Ephesians. That's what he's talking about here.

So Ephesians 1.12. We've studied this already together. But he says, we who are the first to hope in Christ. Meaning that we've placed weight there. We've pushed our chips there. Like we believe this is going to work out.

We're placing our hope in Jesus. Ephesians 2.12. Later than this, he's going to say, at that time you were separated from Christ. You were alienated. And you were without hope. Without God in the world.

And so it's this hope that's like a certain confident hope. Colossians 1.15 says, because of the hope laid up for us in heaven. So what he's saying when he says, I pray that you know what is the hope to which he has called you. Is that he's saying, I hope your heart sees. I hope you know fully. All of the good things that come through Christ.

Through salvation in Christ. I hope that you see that Jesus is your only hope. That what he's already talked about. That what God planned, Jesus accomplished, the Holy Spirit guarantees. That he's our hope. For life.

For joy. That all good things are in Christ. So here's the question. For the church. What happens if we don't believe that? What happens if we don't see that?

What's at stake if we don't see that Jesus is our hope? I really think the biggest thing is this. We're going to find something to hope in. We're going to find something to hope in. We're going to find something to place weight on. Something to say, this is what will make life good.

This is what makes life enjoyable. This is what makes, this is the purpose of life. That's what hope is. Like this type of hope is a lifelong, weight bearing, foundational. This is what I believe is actually the good things in life. And so we see this consistently.

But people hope in, you pick a thing. Hope in money. That money is what makes life good. That's what fills up the goodness of life. Or the hope in success. Like if I can just make a name for myself.

If I can just prove that I have value. We can hope in anything. People will pick things like family. I say no, no, no. Money is not the big deal. But family is.

Like just having a good family and raising your children well. And they place all of there. That's what value comes from. That's what I'm leaning on. To give me worth. To know that life matters.

Some people pick things like just being a good person. Like I'm just believing that if I'm a good person. Then that was my point for existing. That if I just serve those who need to be served. If I just. We find something to hope in.

Now. All those things aren't wrong at all. Like family is not bad. Money in itself isn't bad. Serving people isn't bad. But here's the problem with placing our hope in them.

They all fail. They can't handle the weight of a hope in Christ. They ultimately don't pan out. That's why Paul says in Ephesians 2.12. You were without hope without God. You were without hope without God in the world.

That ultimately we believe as Christians. And Paul is telling them. I pray that you see that all of the good things are in Jesus. That ultimately everything else will fall short. I even believe that as we started talking about this. Some of you maybe have been like.

Not everybody has a thing to hope in. Because I've met people that are hopeless. Not saying they'd never get it together. But they just don't have. They don't have any hope. And some people are saying like I'm hopeless.

Like I don't have anything I'm leaning on. I have no hope whatsoever. And all I would say to that is I think. When you meet somebody who's hopeless. Or you feel hopeless. It really just means.

That six months ago. Three years ago. Five years ago. The thing you had placed your hope in. Failed. The thing that you were using to bear weight.

Shattered. It was too flimsy. And it couldn't handle it. That when we get to a point of hopelessness. It just means that the thing we had leaned in for our hope. Our marriage.

Our family. Our finances. Our health. Broke. And what Paul's saying is church. I hope you see.

I'm praying that you'll see. The hope that's in Christ for you. That nothing else carries this promise. And can bear the weight of a life. And ultimately an issue for us as a church. If we don't see the hope that's in Christ.

Take this encouragement. That Paul's looking at this church and saying. You're doing well. I just want y'all to see this. I want you to continue in this. Is that we'll all find self-salvation projects.

We'll find something. To save us. Something that says. This is what makes me good. This is what makes me okay. And ultimately.

If I can just do these things. Or have these things. Then I won't need Jesus. And that's a big problem. So what do you lean into?

Where do you run? Where do you rest? What drives you? What do you fear you might lose? Paul's saying. I hope.

I'm praying. That you realize that it's only in Christ. And only he can carry the weight of that. Let's look at the second thing. He begins to pray for him. He says.

That you may know what is the hope to which he has called you. And. I'm sorry. He doesn't say and there. I just read and there. Hope to which he has called you.

What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints? So I pray that you know the hope. And I pray that you hope to know. What are the riches of the glorious inheritance in the saints? So again.

This is the inheritance that the saints receive. That this is what happens for the church. So Paul's saying. I'm praying for you. Not that you'd be obedient. Not that you'd get it together.

Not that. He says. I want you to know how good Jesus is. And I want you to know. How glorious the inheritance is. He's praying that the Ephesian church would see.

How beautiful. Ultimate reality with God is going to be. That what he just said in the beginning of this chapter. Was that the. The Holy Spirit guarantees our faith. Until we acquire possession of our inheritance.

That he's going to carry us to the end. Until we actually have the inheritance. And he says. I pray that you see how good the inheritance is. So let's just talk about that for a second.

Spencer was just talking about it. A minute ago. Josh was talking about it. A minute ago. But it's this.

This. That we will finally be free from sin. That we'll get God. It's that we'll get heaven. That we'll be ushered into a place of freedom. And joy.

With no pain. And no hurt. And no crying. And no tears. And no mourning. A place of celebration.

And joy. The way God intended the world to be. That we'll get all the good things. That come in Christ. And he's saying. I want you to know how rich.

And glorious it is. I want you to have that so settled in your heart. That as the church. You have a rich. And glorious inheritance. Now.

This may make you a little weird. Here. Let's be honest. I think. That the more the church. Sees a rich.

And glorious inheritance. That the more strange. We seem. Here. Here's why. If we don't see this.

What's at stake. If we don't know. Our rich. Glorious inheritance. We have in. In Christ.

Honestly. I think we just. Care a whole lot about. Everything here. We care a whole lot about. Stuff.

We care more about money. We care more about. How life works out. Here's one of the things. I think that happens. In my life.

The less I see. How good and glorious. The inheritance is. That I've been called into. When things go bad here. I get really frustrated with God.

I don't know why this can't work out. It works out for other people. I don't understand. See. Ever heard anybody say. Or felt.

Like. I just feel like God's picking on me. What Paul's saying is. No he's not. There's a rich. And glorious.

Inheritance. Laid up for you. That if you suffer here. You're fine. Nothing was taken away from you. We're actually told.

In throughout. A scripture. That suffering. Actually builds weight. Helps us. Be able to handle.

How good it's going to be later. That our suffering. Actually prepares us. For that. One of the ways. I think this shows up.

In scriptures. The way the Bible. Talks about money. Which is a big deal. And. So in the Old Testament.

They would give. At least about 10%. Of their income. Whatever came in. They would give it away. And then.

It ended up being more than that. Now in the New Testament. It doesn't say. Give away a percentage. Or anything like that. But.

We believe. And teach here. That actually. 10% is actually. Kind of the floor. Would be a good starting place.

Because. We know the gospel. Of what Jesus was ultimately going to do. So why would we give less. Than people who just had a rule. We get Jesus.

Here's why I'm saying this. If you work. And you are a Christian. That means that Christians. Give away. Thousands.

Of dollars. A year. That all Christians who work. Would be giving away. Thousands of dollars. A year.

So if you. Part time jobs. What? 10,000 to 20,000. If you're working a full time Job. You're 20,000 up.

How crazy is it. If you make 20,000 dollars. That you would give away. 2,000 dollars. Y'all. Not crazy to y'all.

That's crazy to me. That doesn't sound crazy to y'all. You paying bills. And you're giving money away. That amount. Like a substantial amount.

Of your money. People would be giving away. If you make 30, 40, 50. People would be giving away. Thousands of dollars. Let me tell you something.

My wife and I. We do this. We give away money. That's jet ski money y'all. Not a great one. But a jet ski.

It's used. I got it off. A for sale free Lexington. Whatever. But like.

It would be a jet ski. And then it would float. That's. That's play golf money. That's. That's eat out.

All the time money. Y'all don't even understand. How many times I could eat a Cracker Barrel. For thousands of dollars a year. Here's the thing. If we don't as the church.

Remember. The glorious inheritance. That awaits us. We are. We will only be able to see. The.

Unglorious. Stuff that's in front of us. We'll care. A lot about money. We'll care a lot about how life's working out. We'll care a lot about.

That it's actually. Some of these things. Where Paul says. No no no. Remember how good it's going to be. Hold that in your head.

That actually sets us free. To begin to follow some of the things. That we're called. To do. It's not just money. My wife.

Is about as introverted. As a person can be. She has to remember. How good heaven is. To go hang out with people. She has to.

Remind herself. No there's more to life. Than. Than what I can just see. And I actually have to care enough about people. And remember that there's a glorious inheritance coming.

And. And care about that for them. So that I can try to be around them. And I can love them. And I can get to know them. She says.

In order to sacrifice. So Paul says. I hope you see this. I hope this becomes a settled reality for you. That what's coming is better. So that we wouldn't have an allegiance to stuff.

But that we'd be free. He doesn't say that. I just think that's one of the implications. There's probably a lot more. But I think that's the most direct one for me.

That the more I remember heaven. The more willing I am to sacrifice. And to serve. And to care for others. And to give money away. And the less I think about it.

Like I think if I sat down and thought. Ten minutes about a glorious inheritance. Right before I did my budget. I think it would change how I did my budget. But if I don't think about it.

I think it. I think it changes things. Okay. Nineteen. And. Verse nineteen.

And what is the immeasurable greatness. Of his power. Toward us who believe. So this is for those who believe. Those who have placed faith in Jesus. He says.

I pray. That you would know. What is the immeasurable greatness. Of his power. Toward us who believe. According to the working.

Of his great might. That he worked. In Christ Jesus. When he raised him from the dead. According to his working. Of his great might.

That he worked in Christ. When he raised him from the dead. So the third thing he prays. That would be a settled reality for us. Is that we would know. The immeasurable greatness.

Of his might. The immeasurable greatness. Of his power. That he worked for us. Now. Greatness means bigness.

And it's immeasurable. So he's just saying. Not that you would know the extent of it. That you would know it is immeasurable. That you would. You would be overwhelmed.

By how powerful. His salvation was for us. When Christ rose from the dead. How powerful his power. At work for us was. When Christ rose from the dead.

This is. This immeasurable greatness. This immeasurable greatness. Of power is. You watch Rocky. He trains the whole movie.

They enter into the ring. And he one punch knock out. Apollo Creed. Just walks in. Slips a punch. Knocks him out.

Turns to the camera. And goes. Hey yo Adrian. Like. No drama. It just takes all the joy out of it.

Like it just. It was immeasurable. Great power. Or it's. You've watched seven or eight. Movies of.

Of Harry Potter. You've read thousands of words. They get to the end. Snake face shows up. And Harry Potter is just like. Aardvarkadabra.

And he just dies. Just turns into dust. He looks at the camera and says. That's what I call magic. And then it just ends the movie. It's like.

He ruined it. It was supposed to be some tension here. And so. What he's saying is. Church. I want you to see.

I want you to see. Jesus didn't just barely save you. When Christ rose from the grave. That wasn't just. Some little parlor trick. There was a measurable great power.

That goes to work. For those who believe. That when you place your faith in Jesus. An immeasurable greatness of power. Has been applied to your account. And here's what happens.

If we don't believe this. I think two things happen. At least. I mean. There's a bunch. But.

One of the things is. I have to be powerful. If Jesus' power is in it. That work for me. I have to be powerful. I have to be powerful in conversations.

I have to be powerful in relationships. I have to be powerful. Or. Everything else is terrifying. Bosses are terrifying. The person you're dating is terrifying.

That you might lose them. That. That. They'd be mean to you. Some of you are like. Yeah.

The person I'm dating is terrifying. We advocate all the time. At our church. So you just break up with them. Sorry. I've lost it.

Guys. Let me give you a second. All right. That everything else becomes more powerful. That. That.

The Democrats. If they take over the White House. The Republicans. If they take over the White House. Everything is going to melt down ten years from now. We're all just going to.

We're all going to. I watch The Walking Dead to train. Because I know what's coming. You guys. Like. Everything else becomes more terrifying.

But he. What. What happens to us in our sin. Some of you. You're fine. You're fine.

You're fine. You're doing great with Jesus. As long as you're behaving. But as soon as you start seeing your sin show up. This is why. When someone starts pointing out your sin.

You won't listen. Because they're attacking you. If they say. Hey. You're off here. You're wrong here.

You can't hear that. Because your. Your value. Your worth. Your stability. Is built off of your behavior.

And if they suddenly point out sin. You will crumble. But if you actually notice it. If it actually. What happens in this situation. For someone who has.

Lost the power of Jesus's salvation for them. And is not holding it in their head. What happens is. I have to be good. I have to be moral. Everything has to work out.

This happens all the time. For those who are in the church. When people point out sin. You won't listen. Can't. You can't listen.

Because none of it. They just don't understand. They don't. They don't understand the circumstances. They don't realize how it was the other person's fault. You can't listen.

And then. You. Because you won't listen. To them pointing out little sin. It builds. It builds.

It builds. You're still trying to hide. And mask. And cover. And protect. Train wreck.

And in that moment. You're like. I don't know if I'm a Christian. I don't know if I'm saved. I don't know where Jesus is. I don't know.

I don't know. Because you're completely unstable. Because you're not resting in. The power. Of the resurrected Christ. On your behalf.

To conquer your sin. And to set you free. But when we know that. When we know the power of his resurrection. That is for us who believe. When someone points out your sin.

You're like. Yes. And Jesus conquered it. And I can be free from it. And when you do. Train wreck things.

When you do mess stuff up. You can be honest about it. And you can walk in it. Because Jesus's power. Has so much conquered that for you. That you're free.

You didn't have to be strong. You didn't have to be powerful. Jesus is. He says. I pray that you would know. The immeasurable greatness.

Of his power. Towards us who believe. That for those who have placed. Faith in Jesus. There is immeasurable greatness. Of power for us.

Applied to us. In defense of us. Conquering our sin. Our death. Our shame. The enemy.

Okay. So in verse. 20. No. Back half of verse 19. Where it says.

According to the working. Here's where he starts. Kind of saying. That all three of those. I'm praying these three things for you. What what what.

And then when he says. According to the working. Of his great might. He's kind of binding them all together. And saying. That they're actually.

Brought together. Held together. Kept. By this. According to this. And so the rest of what he says.

Is basically like. If. If you want to know. What your hope is. And you want to have a place. To.

Ground that. If you want to know. The inheritance you have. And want to have a place. To ground that. If you need to know.

The immeasurable greatness. Of his power. And have a place. To ground that. He's saying. Let me tell you how.

How absolutely. In charge of everything. Jesus is. So that you can have a place. To set all of this. And it won't go anywhere.

According. To the working. Of his great might. That he worked. In Christ. When he raised him.

From the dead. So first. He says. That this is grounded. In the fact. That there is an empty tomb.

That used to hold. A dead Jesus. There's an empty tomb. That used to hold. A dead Jesus. But that Christ.

In great power. Was raised from the dead. And seated him. At the right hand. In the heavenly places. Far above.

All rule. And authority. And power. And dominion. And above every name. That is named.

Not only in this age. But also in the one to come. I love. That verse. 21. Far above.

So he's not just above. He's far above. All. All. All rule. And authority.

And power. And dominion. Above every name. That is named. Not only in this age. But also in the one to come.

What does that include? All of it. Who's Jesus above? Yes. All. All authority.

All power. Every. Every municipality. Every throne. Every king. Every prince.

Every. Every political party. Every regime. All demonic influences. Influences. And forces.

Everything. Jesus is ahead. Over all of it. I was giving my son a bath. He's two. He's really into the Avengers right now.

Which is good. It's better than some of the other stuff. He gets excited about. Like that wheels on the bus show. On Netflix. I can watch Avengers with him.

Way better. He's taking a bath. And I was like. Archer. I just want to tell you. That Jesus is strong.

Do you know Jesus is strong? Like I'm just. Talking to him about it. And he sits and looks at me. He says. Jesus is strong?

I said. Yeah. Jesus is strong. He said. Okay. Kept playing for a second.

And then he went. Are you going to have to fight Thor? I said. Jesus will wear Thor out. He said. Wear him out?

I was like. Yeah. I said. Yeah. No. No.

No contest. And I. Guys. I was just teaching him about the Bible. Like this is it right here. And I was like.

What are y'all talking about? I was like. Theology. That he's ahead of everything. Over all rule. All authority.

Every name that could be named. Thor. Odin. Everybody. Verse 22. Verse 22.

This is going to be on the screen. We're going to walk through this for just a second. Because I. The more I read it this week. The more encouraged I was by this. The more.

Captivated I was by this idea. That he kind of finishes this thought with. And he put all things under his feet. And gave him his head over all things to the church. Which is his body. The fullness of him who fills all.

And all. So in here there's two. There's two kind of. Players I guess. There's Jesus. And there's the church.

And he just kind of weaves them together in this last thing. So he's saying. This is for all who believe. And then he ends this by saying. Here's where it's grounded. Here's where you can bank on it.

And here's what he says. So he says. He put all things under his feet. So that's Jesus. And gave him as head over all things. So that's Jesus.

Him as head over all things. To the church. Which is his body. So that's the church. It's also Jesus. It's his body.

But the church is his body. The fullness is referring to his body. Which refers to the church. Of him who fills all in all. Now this was.

So all the brighter yellow is Jesus. His feet gave him as head over all things. To the church. Which is his body. The fullness of him who fills all in all. So I want you to see this real quick.

Jesus who's head over all rule and authority. Because of the cross. Because of the resurrection. He has ascended. Above every name. Every dominion.

Everything. And God gave Jesus. Who is the head of all things. To the church. That Jesus was given. To the church.

And it says the church. Is his body. So now. Now they're given in this like. Connected. Perfectly unified.

That Jesus is the head. And the church is his body. The fullness. That's referring to the body. So the church becomes the fullness.

Of Jesus. The church. Those who believe in Jesus. Become the fullness of Jesus. And Jesus. Is him who fills all in all.

Okay. When it says. He's him who fills all in all. That means that. Everything. That ever existed.

Or ever will exist. Will only ever find its purpose. In Jesus. That its fullness. Is found in Jesus. How it related to him.

Is where it finds its. Purpose. Its role. Its place in the universe. Is connected. To Jesus.

Who fills up. Everything. Who makes everything full. And Jesus. His fullness. Is united with the church.

That Jesus has chosen. To only be full. Only be complete. In as far as he brings the church. To belong to himself. That those who are in Christ.

Are his body. And his fullness. Is. God. второй. We have. For.

God. Lord. Amen. Always. He is. The inheritance that you have.

The great power that was at work for you when Jesus rose from the dead. And I want you to see that he's head over everything and that we're in him. The privileged position that those who believe hold in the universe because of how good Jesus is. That when all of this plays out and everything is said and done, that the creator of the universe will call his church home to enjoy all of the good things that were ever meant to be enjoyed and rightly enjoyed in the world. And that belongs to the church. To those who have been saved by the grace of Jesus.

Not by their effort, not by their goodness, but the fact that Jesus died, rose from the grave, and they believed in him. Now, if that sinks in, if that becomes real to you, personally in life, if that becomes real, if it sinks in that your hope is in Jesus, meaning there are no other hopes that are worth hoping in, nothing else will satisfy, and that your inheritance is in Jesus, meaning that all the good things ultimately are in him. So there's nothing good outside of him. All the good things are in him. And his power is at work for those who believe. And we've been united with him, given a privileged position in the universe, that Jesus' fullness is full when he brings the church to himself, that we become one with him.

Here's what happens. Let me explain how this slightly applies to jobs. If you lose your job, you didn't lose your hope. You didn't lose the goodness of your inheritance. And you are not powerless. And your position in the universe is untouched.

If you get the greatest Job offer ever, it's not a better hope. It doesn't give a better inheritance. It doesn't give you more power. And it has nothing on your position in the universe. Let's talk high school students, college students, maybe some middle school students in here, I don't know.

Let's talk about embarrassment. You know what I'm talking about? Like you go home from school and you said something or did something. A fifth grade chet, one time, while his teacher was up in front of the class, giving a little talk about something, I don't remember, dropped his pencil, bent over and passed gas loudly in front of the entire class. And then my teacher, in order to help me, gave a speech about how that was normal and that's okay. I was like, I'm going to harm you.

This is terrible. Like you're making this way worse. But you know those days you would go home and think, I don't want to go to school tomorrow. I don't want school to exist anymore. We're going to move. We're just going to move.

I'm going to move. You see, like the days you go tell your parents, like I think I have some sort of learning condition. I'm going to need to go to a different school. And you think, middle school is like this, but it will go away. No, high school is like that, but it will go away. No, college is like, people go home from work and go, I don't want to go to work tomorrow.

I don't want to look at those people. What will I say? Hi, Tina. Like I have nothing. Like I don't even want to make eye contact after what happened. Didn't change your hope.

Didn't remove your inheritance. Hasn't altered your position or power. Hadn't touched where you exist in the universe if you belong to Jesus. You can go down the line. Relationships, family, health. You get a report that you have cancer.

Doctor looks at you and says, We can do treatment. Small percentage of that will work. Didn't change your hope. Doesn't affect your inheritance. You're not powerless. You're not powerless.

There's an immeasurable greatness of power towards those who believe because Christ rose from the grave. And your position in the universe is untouched. Christians are more equipped to suffer than any other humans on the face of the earth. Because we're untouchable. That's why Paul can write this from prison a few years ahead of being beheaded. That's why he can be in prison and say, I hope you know how good Jesus is.

And I hope you know how wonderful it's going to be. And I hope it sinks down into your heart that we're not powerless. It's like, bro, you're in chains. Chains. They're going to, at some point, walk in and say, Today's the day. You don't exist anymore.

And Paul's like, nope. I exist in a more greater reality than you'll ever enter into the moment that my head falls off my shoulders. Because this reality had sunk into his heart. I think if our church begins to believe this, you won't be able to peel us away from each other. That we will be so focused on Jesus' church. That we'll be hanging out with our community group and fighting for the things that matter.

That we'll be serving. That we'll be giving. That you won't be able to get us away. Because no, this is where all the good things belong. They're in Jesus and his people that he's elevated above all the rest of creation. Not because we're great, but because he is.

I don't think you'd be able to get us to stop telling our friends about Jesus. Because we'll be able to see through how much of a mirage, everything that they're leaning into for hope is. How much it will all falter and fall short. And that one day we will have a glorious inheritance that is untouched. By how much money we give away right now. By how much we sacrifice.

By how much we serve. I think that we would get to look a little bit more like Paul. Where they could take everything from us. And we go, I'm fine, you guys. This hurts. But I'm okay.

Because ultimately, it wasn't where my hope was. It's not where the good things in life come from. I'm not powerless. And my position in the universe hadn't changed. Matt and Bianca are going to come back up. And here's how we're going to respond right now.

Honestly, I hope that the way we respond is that as a church, we begin to study this so that it does sink into a reality in our hearts. We begin to read this passage until it changes our wallets, until it changes our time, until it changes how we treat one another, until it changes how much we believe that each other matter. How much we care about our neighbors who are doing really well when it comes to South Carolina standards. Who are doing really well when it comes to American standards. But that are putting their hope in something that one day will snap.

And honestly, as Christians, we pray. One of the things I hope for all of my neighbors, for all the people who don't know Jesus, is that their hope snaps now. So they can see how brittle it was prior to the day they stand before the King and see that their hope being misplaced was a dire, drastic issue. So here's how we're going to respond in this moment, though. Matt and Bianca are going to play, and they're going to sing in just a second. And the song they're going to sing is for us to just kind of listen and think about.

They're going to sing about no matter what else we could find on earth, it's just not enough. We could chase every avenue, we could pursue everything we could get, it would ultimately not be enough, that only Jesus is. And if you're a Christian, I just want you to sit for a minute, and then when you feel ready, you'll take communion while they're singing. You just sit, you're going to pray, and then you're going to go, we get to take communion today, remembering that because Christ died for us, we've been incorporated in Him, that His body and His blood were shed, His body was broken, His blood was shed for us, so that we could become one with Him.

That our hope could be in Him, that our inheritance could be in Him. And if you're not a Christian, I just ask you to believe this. This is for all those who believe, that you can go to Jesus and say, I want this, I want the hope that is unshakable, that's grounded in an event that happened in the past. That you rose from the grave, and from now on, hope is secure. That Christ rose, and so I can forever have this be real for me. I want to cease to believe that everything here is beautiful and good, and chase after everything that's shiny, that ultimately won't fulfill.

And I want you, Jesus, I'd ask you to pray that. Ask Him to change you, to place your faith in Him. And then you can, for the first time ever, as a real, genuine follower of Jesus, come take communion, which is the celebration that Jesus' body was broken for us, and His blood was shed for us, and that He was laid in a tomb, but that He rose. And there's an immeasurable greatness of power towards all who believe. So I'd ask you to believe this morning.

Let's pray. God, we thank You for Your goodness. I thank You for Your love that You have towards us. And I pray, that this will become a settled reality in our hearts. There wouldn't be a day that went by for our church family, that we didn't remember that all of our hope is in You. That ultimately, we have a glorious inheritance that awaits.

That all of this is just temporary. And that there's an immeasurable power at work for us, through Christ. Amen.

According to His Will

According to His Will

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

How are we doing this morning? Bless your souls. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We're in the book of Ephesians, so if you want to go ahead and grab a Bible and go to Ephesians. If you have one of the white Bibles that's kind of been sitting on the chairs around you, will be on page 567.

And so that's where we'll be. We're studying through the book of Ephesians. When we planted this church a couple years ago, we said we wanted to be a gospel-centered community on mission. We want to be a gospel people. We want our lives to be built around the fact that Jesus Christ died to save sinners and to give them a place with him. Which means that we want to be Bible people.

Because the point of the Bible is to point us to Jesus. The goal of the scriptures is to get us to the fullness of understanding God's mystery revealed to us in Christ. So we want to be Bible people. So if you've been a part of our church for a while, maybe you've been hanging out on Sundays, you've been in a community group, you may have noticed that we've changed some of how we're doing things on Sundays. We're reading the Bible more. We're reading the Bible out loud together.

It's a little weird for me. Not reading the Bible, like that's good, but reading it out loud together, like I never did that. And it just feels a little odd to me. So if you're in that boat, I just want to explain a little bit of why we're doing that. We're like a vending machine that you put the coins in, but they didn't drop. And so you have to start smacking the side of the vending machine to get the coins to drop.

That's kind of how we are when it comes to believing and remembering all that is good and true about Jesus. That we maybe have it in our head, but it hadn't quite dropped to our heart yet. And so one of our goals on Sunday is to smack our heads with the gospel repeatedly, in as many ways as we possibly can, so that it will drop to our hearts. So that's going to be us reading the Bible. That's going to be us reading collectively together, saying things together. It's going to be us singing.

It's going to be us studying scripture together, because our goal is to saturate ourselves with this truth so that it sticks with us. So standing up and collectively reading underlying portions together is kind of weird for me. Maybe you love it, and I'm excited. I'm glad for you. But maybe the person next to you doesn't.

But last week we did that, and then three days later I remembered what we read. And I was like, okay, then fine. If it's weird but it helps me remember it, it's worth it. So good morning, and hopefully we can help ram the Bible into our brain so that it goes to our heart and sticks with us this morning. So that's one of the reasons why we study through books of the Bible together.

So we're in Ephesians. We're a couple weeks in, and we aren't that far into it, because Paul starts this letter off with a very big, very dense sentence. We read it last week, and now we're kind of zooming back in to try to understand a little more. So I'm going to pray, and then we're going to pick up in verse 3 and begin kind of our time this morning together studying the Word. So let's pray.

God, I just pray that through the power of your Holy Spirit we would see the immense glory of your grace towards us, that we would see the beauty in it this morning as we study this, and that as Paul meant it to be an encouragement, I just ask that it be an encouragement to us today as well. In Jesus' name, amen. We're going to go to verse 3. We're going to read 3 through 10, because I want to kind of focus in on something at the end there just to get us started, and then we'll go back to verse 3. So, 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 before 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 Beloved. 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. This is what I want us to see as we get started this morning. 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 earth.

Throughout that passage, it says that He chose us, He predestined, He did this according to the purpose of His will, and then it kind of comes there and it says, to reveal the mystery of His will, according to His purpose, as a plan for the fullness of time. And so what it's saying is that God's intention to save was a plan that He worked out according to the purpose of His will throughout history, that human history is playing out according to the will of God. That's what that passage is telling us. Now, this is very encouraging to us because God has never been surprised. He's never suddenly had to huddle up with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and say, what are we going to do here?

Like, He's never had plans that went differently than He had intended. Like, His overall plan for the world has worked out the way He has intended it. He's working all things according to the purpose of His will. So I don't know about you, very rarely do my plans work out. Like, have you ever planned the perfect vacation and came back more tired? Because the pictures weren't exactly the way they showed them online.

Like, you didn't know the carpet was going to make that noise when you stepped on it and, like, you were afraid to wear... You had to wear shoes. Like, we went on vacation one time and we just wore shoes in the hotel the whole time because I didn't know quite what we were stepping on. But it was like... Every time you walk somewhere, it was just weird. Like, there's...

I have a two-year-old son. My wife and I have to huddle up on a regular basis. I'll have to, like... I'll put him to bed. And then it's like, we have to recap the whole day and try to figure out how we're going to do this better tomorrow. My wife is a very smart lady and I'm like, all right, you've got to help me out here.

Because one of the things she's told me is that neither me nor my two-year-old knows how to de-escalate a situation. She is correct. He goes big, I go bigger. He goes bigger, I go biggest. Like, I'm... You know, it's like I'm not going...

And she's going, you can... You're an adult. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to win. And... So we have to work on making plans all the time, but God's plans work out.

His purpose for the world is working out. And so let's go back and begin to ask, what is His purpose? What is He doing? What are these plans that He's working out? What was the plan for the fullness of time that He purposed according to His will? Okay.

Verse 3, right at the top. Blessed to be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. That's what we spent our time on last week. Verse 4, Even as He chose us in Him before 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 beloved. Alright, so here's what I want us to see. We've got it pulled up so we can just kind of look at it together.

First it says that He chose us in Him and it also says that He predestined us. So I want to highlight that. That's what God did. That He chose us in Him and He predestined us. In Him there's Jesus. So every time it says in Him it's talking about Christ.

So what it's saying is that God chose the church. That's what Paul's telling them. So again, we're trying to be Bible people. We're just trying to understand what this passage is saying and it's saying that God chose the church in Christ. That He predestined which means that before everything got started He predestined it. So if you just look at the chronology of that it says He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.

So before the world got started God was already working on this plan. He was already actively through the purpose of His will choosing the church. Now, people will explain and have explained that as what it means is that He chose to save through Christ and He chose the church in general not in specific. But in the book of Revelation chapter 17 verse 8 it says those whose names were written down in the book of life before the foundation of the world. So it actually is saying that no, God chose in specific those whom He would save before the foundation of the world.

That's what the text is saying. Now, why? What was His purpose? What was He trying to accomplish? And so it says He chose us in Him that we should be holy and blameless and He predestined us for adoption. So God's immediate goals were to make us holy and blameless and to adopt us into His family.

That was the short term goal but it keeps going. There's a bigger goal. It says to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will to the praise of His glorious grace. That God's choosing and saving the church that God's adopting those who would believe in Christ was to the praise of His glorious grace. His ultimate purpose was to show in the Greek it kind of originally says the glory of His grace was to show how good grace is. So we're going to spend some time there this morning.

What is grace? Why is it glorious? And why would God as He purposed the world set it up in His saving and in His work through Jesus do it to point to how glorious His grace is? There's a pastor named John Piper. He's a pastor theologian. He's written a lot of books.

He in explaining this passage said that there's two other places in the New Testament where Paul helps give a definition for grace and we're going to look at those two because I do think it is helpful. So Romans 11 we'll have it on the screen. You're more than welcome to flip there but we'll have it on the screen. Romans 11 we're going to look at verses 2 through 7. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. So He's talking at this point in the book of Romans to a church in Rome and He's talking about God's relating to Israel the people of Israel in the Old Testament and now Him working through Jesus for the church and the church is all those who place faith in Jesus.

So He said God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah that's a prophet in the Old Testament how he appeals to God against Israel Lord they have killed your prophets they have demolished your altars and I alone am left and they seek my life but what is God's reply to him? I have kept for myself 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So what he's he's just telling a story he's saying remember this and then he's going to apply it to the church and what he says is don't you remember when Elijah said I'm the only one I'm the only one who hasn't worshipped someone else I'm the only one who hasn't run away from you and he said what was God's response?

Who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So what he's he's just telling a story he's saying remember this and then he's going to apply it to the church and what he says is don't you remember when Elijah said I'm the only one I'm the only one who hasn't worshipped someone else I'm the only one who hasn't run away from you and he said what was God's response? No no you're not the only one

I've kept a remnant for myself I've kept a group and so then Paul says so too at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace so there's that idea again that God chooses that He because He's God chooses but He did it by grace and so now He's going to help us understand give us a definition

For grace but if it is by grace it is no longer on the basis of works otherwise grace would no longer be grace so He gives us kind of a negative definition but what He's saying is but if it is by grace it is no longer on the basis of works otherwise grace would no longer be grace if you add in works

Grace ceases that's what He's saying so like if I gave you a glass of water it's water if I add a little bit of poison is it still water I think police officers would say it was poison I've watched enough of those creepy murder shows with my wife to understand how this works a little bit of poison

Makes it poison what He's saying is grace is unadulterated like it has nothing else added to it once you add in a little bit of effort a little bit of work a little bit of here's what I did grace is no longer grace that's the definition He's giving us here so here's what's helpful

For us to see that God we may be tempted to say okay okay okay okay if the Bible says that God chooses God chose whom He would save and if it says He chose specific people then maybe God before He founded the world because He's God and He's outside of time

And just so y'all know all the timelines get really confusing when God enters in because He is outside of time like He created time so He's before it and after it and in the middle of it and so some of the logic begins to break down just so you know so if you'd like to get a headache think about that for a while but

God's outside of time but He looks forward in the future and He picks the people He likes He picks the people who have it together He picks the people who have this certain quality He picks the humble He picks the good He picks the nice He does all these kind of things but what Paul's saying is no as soon as you add in here's the thing they did here's the effort they put forth here's the quality

They had it's no longer grace so who'd He pick? people based off of nothing so far that's all that's all we've got so far there was no marker no indicator no here's who I'm going to save but Paul in another in 1 Corinthians gives us a little more of a definition that I think is helpful for us 1 Corinthians we'll look at this one again we'll highlight some stuff

In it as well for consider your calling brother so he's writing to the church and he's saying remember when you were converted remember when you became a Christian for consider your calling brothers not many of you were wise according to worldly standards not many were powerful not many were noble birth but God chose what is foolish in the world

To shame the wise God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong okay so here's why here's why God chose what He chose it says He looks at the church and says remember when you became a Christian how many of y'all had it together let's do this this is collective just sit for a minute remember when you became a Christian how many of you would say oh I was crushing it

Oh man I became a Christian at the pinnacle of life for me He's like no not many of you were smart not many of you were strong not many of you were influential not many of you were powerful He's leaving a little room maybe some of you a little bit but not many of you had it together and then He says here's what God did He chose what is foolish that's y'all that's us that's the church

To shame the wise and He chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong He keeps going go to the next section yeah God chose what is low and despised let's cross stitch that on a pillow that'll be our Bible verse low and despised not only do people not really pay attention to me and I'm very low but also I'm disliked low and despised in the world even the things

That are not to bring to nothing the things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God we're going to look at that bottom verse in just a second but I want to explain this real quick what He says is that God when He picked the church when He chose whom He would save when God went to work for salvation He chose the weak the small the dumb the uninfluential those who do not

Have it together in order to shame the wise to shame the strong to shame the influential that when we look in the world and we'd say these are obviously the people who have it together Jesus says well I'm not picking those I'm picking these and we're going to make them look like fools I played college football I was on the team it was my sophomore year I had a helmet I had a locker

I was moving up in the world it's big things you guys they let me have a practice jersey and cleats but what I really wanted to do was ride the bus I wanted to get something that actually let me dress because every week you'd go look at a list of names and I'd go to the piece and then I would go to my room because there was no like my name wasn't on the list and so I was working really hard just to get on a special team so I was going for kickoff and all I was on

Was on the practice squad kickoff team which means that when they were kicking off to the actual return team I got to run down and try to tackle them and I was just doing my best to try to show them you should want me to play football for you we're in film and I'm watching and I was the first one down I'm running with some fast guys like there's some guys on this team that like I I was the first one down the second time I'm the first one down the third time I mean these are just sprints we're running as fast as we can

And trying to run into someone and so I'm every single time I'm running as fast and finally the coach goes stop takes his little red pointer he goes go back he says is this Phillips Phillips I was like yes little college football butterflies I'm like yes here we go he goes Phillips look at this he shows it he says

Phillips is the first one down show the next one Phillips is the first one down show the next one Phillips is the first one down and I'm going yes here we go he's going to say Phillips well done good and faithful football player you may now ride the bus what's he say he points the pointer at everyone else and goes Phillips is the first one down y'all aren't trying he used what was slow to shame the fast he used what was weak to shame the strong he used the thing that was not

To bring to nothing the things that were like he that's what he did and that's what God does in the church that if you are a Christian you're low and despised you're weak and you're small you're nothing and then God has claimed you and here's why he gives us the negative reason and the positive reason here's the negative reason so that no human being might boast in the presence of God that on the day when Jesus Christ comes to claim

His church it will not be a group of people that rise up and say finally our goodness is on display finally our morality paid off finally our wisdom our rightness our accomplishment our suffering finally our humility has been acknowledged and we'll get to look around at those who did not have it together no no one boasts

In the presence of God he grabbed all of those who had nothing to offer nothing to display nothing to show nothing that was honorable and he saved them for go to the next the next section and because of him that's Jesus you are he's talking to the church we're in Christ Jesus and who became to us wisdom from God righteousness righteousness means right standing all that is good about us sanctification

Which means that he's slowly working out in us to make us better and redemption meaning that he bought us out of sin to set us free so that as it is written let the one who boasts boast in the Lord do you know who's magnified on the day that Jesus claims his church Jesus because nobody bought by Jesus brought anything to the table except their own sin they were low they were despised they were wicked

They were broken they were dead in sin slaves to sin and Jesus saved them and on that day we boast in Jesus that's what it says let the one who boasts boast in the Lord that as Christians our claim is that Jesus is good and Jesus is holy and he's redemption for me and he's righteousness for me and he's sanctification for me not my ability to memorize scripture not my ability to obey not my ability to be moral not what movies I have and haven't watched just Jesus not what I did do

Or didn't do or how I've repented or like it just Jesus he's what makes me good that's grace so back in Ephesians Paul says that he chose before the foundation of the world to make us holy and blameless meaning we weren't homely and blameless but he makes us holy and blameless that he predestined to adopt us meaning it wasn't just about getting rid of our sins but it was about welcoming us in bringing us into the family

That we get God out of this and he did this to the praise of his glorious grace to show how good his grace is it'd be like a little league coach who wanted to display how great of a coach he was so he let everybody else pick and said give me all the kids nobody wants and then won the tournament with them and it would be to display he's a great coach

It's kind of what God was doing on a much more massive scale when he chose the church he claimed all those who had nothing to offer nothing to show nothing that was amazing about them or glorious or awesome and then he makes them holy and blameless and brings them into his family now I think if we think about this if you're like me

You're looking at this and you're going okay I see that the Bible says that it bothers me a little bit it doesn't sit quite right with me like I get that I didn't bring anything to the table I'm not really upset by that I see the Bible says but here's the question I have and here's what I think one of the common kind of and I want to take just a minute to try to help us think through this

I think common common response is but wait we're free and if God just saves whoever he wants to save and if he actually wrote our names down and if he did it based off of nothing then that means he just chose and did what he wanted doesn't it make us not free doesn't it make us some sort of like puppets isn't this just like a big play where God's just acting stuff out

And if you didn't have that pushback I gave it to you so sorry that's a that's a that's a tension I feel I want to give two quick answers to that first one about us being puppets doesn't this just make us robots we don't get to say that because the Bible does not say that it's logically it makes logical sense to say well if God chooses then I had no choice

In the matter but the Bible doesn't let us say that and we try to get our theology from the Bible see the Bible says that you do have a choice and that your choices do matter consistently like when Jesus says he came and he began preaching repent for the kingdom of God is at hand when he says repent he means it he means see your sin

Turn when all the times where it says like choose this day whom you'll serve or God saves all those who believe in him or everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved like this call to like if you repent if you acknowledge if you turn like it it means it it's a genuine call if you just look at the book of Ephesians

There are 41 as we keep going through the book of Ephesians there are 41 direct commands meaning that Paul looks at the church and says do this make a choice change at one point he says do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God that's Ephesians 430 don't grieve the Holy Spirit of God meaning that we can act in such a way as to hurt God

At another point in Ephesians 5 he lists off a whole bunch of sins and then he says because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience so what he's saying is that it's because of our sin it's because of our rebellion God's wrath is coming one of the things the Bible makes very clear is that we have moral responsibility that our choices

Are real choices that actually matter we are not robots or puppets the Bible says very clearly that God works everything according to the purpose of his will that he he accomplishes that what he set out to accomplish that he's going to work all things in accordance with his will for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose

That he's declares the end from the beginning that he chose those whom he would save like it says that very clearly but it also says that you choose that you actively choose sin that you have actively willfully rebelled against God that you need to repent and choose to follow God like it says both of those clearly and the question

Is well how do those fit together and the Bible does not tell us that which I have one small answer and then the illustration help us picture this small answer is it doesn't perfectly fit together as frustrating as that is especially for the people who have to have it fit together we can trust

That if God were going to develop a system there's a good chance it would be more complex than what we could come up with so I'm willing to at least concede that he could come up with something better than I could come up with that would have components that are more difficult to understand than I could come up with the other

Thing and this is just an illustration to help you think about it a theologian named G.K. Chesterton said that there are some philosophies some ways of thinking about the Bible some theology some philosophies for the world that are like the moon they make perfect logical sense you can define their edges clearly you can stare at them endlessly

But they don't light everything up they make that philosophy makes perfect logical sense you can study it you can know it in and out but it doesn't light everything up he said the sun is not like that I don't know if any of y'all when you were looking at the solar eclipse learned as the sun poked its head back out that the sun even a little

Bit of it is really bright I know Donald Trump learned that the sun's really bright he stared directly into it his point about the sun what he says is the sun's not like that the sun is not easily stared at it's not

It doesn't have easily defined edges you can't just wrap the sun around like you can't do it but the sun lights everything up I think this fits into that category it's not easily perfectly understood how this fits

Together but to say that God sovereignly rules over the universe and we are free moral agents does light up all of scripture it even makes sense of some passages that that are like in Acts 2 23 Peter's preaching by the power of Holy Spirit and he says Jesus delivered up

According to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God meaning that Jesus went to the cross why because of the definite plan and foreknowledge of God that was what was going to happen and then he ends the sentence by this you crucified and killed

By the hands of lawless men definite plan and foreknowledge of God you did it in lawlessness mean open rebellion you actively chose this and it's like which is it the Bible says yes yes it is both it's in Isaiah 10 one of my

Favorite passages that perfectly displays this Isaiah 10 5-12 God tells a nation I'm going to raise you up and I'm going to use you to conquer nations and you're going to be like a tool in my hand and then he says and the whole time you're going to be arrogant and actively participating

In it and as soon as I'm done using you I'm going to punish you for your wicked sins and it's like what did they did they do it or did you do it were they a tool in your hand or were they actively choosing to sin and the Bible says yes now I'm going to be

Honest with y'all I have there are days when this is immensely comforting to me and there are days where this is very frustrating and there are times where I'm going I don't I'm wrestling with God I'm like how does this work and how does this work itself out and if that's true isn't this true and trying to study the Bible on it and

There's something that wins me over so back back in Ephesians let me let me pause before we go back to Ephesians let me say this there is there's an inclination in us to say no I'm free I'm free God can't overstep his bounds the Bible

Though does not agree with you on your freedom the way you think it would it actually says this Romans 7 14 says Paul's writing he says I know that the law is spiritual but I'm of the flesh sold under sin meaning I'm a slave Jesus says truly I say to you everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin

Ephesians 2 says we're dead in sin so this freedom that we have is actually a freedom to be dead in sin or a freedom to be a slave to sin you are absolutely free to choose to rebel against God and run in sin but in order to be set free from slavery or brought back to life you actually need Jesus to overstep

His bounds to come rescue you it's a little bit like if you were at a swimming pool and somebody drowned and the life guards got in and pulled them out and they were laid out on here and they were pale and you could see water kind of coming out of their

Eyes and nose and the life guard said can I resuscitate you may I resuscitate you go get the waiver go get the waiver he's gotta sign a waiver he's like no just he's not gonna sign a waiver resuscitate

Him that's us we're slaves in sin we're dead in sin and unless Jesus just kicks down the door and rescues us we're stuck children of wrath that's what he adopted us out of Ephesians 2 says we were children of wrath sons of disobedience

That he adopted us into his family but he had to act in order to set us free so the freedom that we like to believe that we have is not as free we actually need Jesus to set us free it's what John 8 36 is where

Jesus goes he says if you sin you're a slave to sin but if the son sets you free you'll be free indeed we actually need Jesus to go to work on us back to Ephesians as I wrestle with this and am

At times relieved and frustrated I think here's what the Bible says repeatedly that silences my frustration or calms my fears about God and his plan verse 7 talking about God working everything according to the purpose of his will this is working out perfectly and then it

Says this in him we have redemption through his blood God before the foundation of the world said I'm going to save you I'm going to carry you on my own back I'm going to take your sin into my flesh

I'm not going to sit up here and be distant from it I'm going to join you and be crushed for it and I think at times we forget that our redemption is through his blood that when God chose to adopt us he chose to adopt us in

Him that when he chose to redeem us he chose to redeem us in him that our salvation comes through Jesus who redeemed us through his blood that God's plan and mystery for the fullness of time was that Jesus Christ would be tortured suffer be punished

Be crushed would breathe his last and be laid in the tomb dead and that when I have this tension of like God are you good and how does this work and I just get to go back to the cross and say I know you love me and I know you're good I know you're for my good and that whatever this plan was

If I would like to think that maybe you could have done it differently the way you ordained it and laid it out and purposed it was that you would save us at great cost to yourself and I can trust you that's what wins me over is that we saved we're saved we're redeemed we're chosen by way of the cross at great cost

To God himself and through great pain and by his blood so there's a tension and there's some mystery but our hope will be forever in the fact that Jesus saves through the cross now when Paul wrote this his goal I don't believe was just to tell us some theology

Just to talk to us about big picture things about God he actually starts his letter here and then he works his way through the rest of it so I think here's where he was going look in verse 9 we'll read 9 and 10

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 earth what he's

Saying is that as God did this one of the implications of it one of the reasons behind it one of the ways that it works is that it actually unites us that he unites us with him and it unites us that everything is united in him

And that's one of the reasons Paul writes this letter to the Ephesians he talks about unity a good bit here's what he's saying if if we're saved saved by something we did then who's in who's accepted who's

Welcome those who do the thing whatever it is memorized behaved well enough we're good enough repented enough prayed enough whatever whatever whatever we kind of get zoned in on we say if you

Do this then you're in like this is what makes you in this is what makes you good this is what makes you okay

Now we know that all those who are saved will call on the name of the Lord will place faith in Jesus we're not saying that people

Are saved outside of that we are saved through Christ it's in him and nobody will be saved under any other thing here's what

Paul immediately applies this to racial prejudice it's the first thing he goes after when he's talking about unity we saw as we began this book we read in Acts

Where they had a big riot and they noticed the guy was Jewish and so they chanted great is the Artemis of the Ephesians for

Two hours these Greek people in this area in Ephesus or his skin tone or his pants I don't know what looked Jewish about

Him but they saw he was Jewish and they chanted great as Artemis of the Ephesians for two hours that's some serious racial tension

That would be like saying something was going on down at the courthouse or down at the state house and somebody showed up and

Was trying to calm them down but when they saw he was white they yelled this for two hours or when they saw he

Was black they yelled this for two hours and nobody could calm them down it's like whoa that's some that's some devoted racial tension

Because I'm not chanting anything for two hours but they did so Paul immediately applies this to racial prejudice and here's what he's saying

Here's how this works with racial prejudice cultural prejudice you like the stuff you like you appreciate the things you grew up with and

Enjoyed like there's something about your own heritage your own people group your own language your own that begins to think this is the

Best version of it we have this some with people who've moved to South Carolina from places up north and they talk to us

About like the types of bread that you can find up north or the types they miss sausage I remember I went to Virginia

And I was like y'all even have barbecue places like what is this I talked to a guy into trying to make it and

He made it and I was like this is terrible you just never mind like you made it worse you somehow made it worse

Like I don't know how you made and what Paul what made you special what saved you what what was good about you why

Were you redeemed why were you accepted what made you okay and he's standing in between them and they're saying nothing just Jesus and

He goes okay so y'all are fine you can get along because you don't have to look at anybody and say here's what makes

Me better and here's how I look down on them this is one of the things we talk about on a regular basis but

If I get all my value from hard work who has to be the bad guy lazy people they're ruining society they're destroying everything

They have to be the bad guy if I get all my value from hard work if you get all your value from your race from

Your heritage who has to be the bad guy anybody not of your race and heritage and usually just because that's too broad pick

A specific one and hate them the most if you get all of your value from being a mom who do you have to

Look down on bad moms they have to be the world's criminals in order for you to be the world's savior for you to

Be good but Paul says he stands in the middle accepted so here's what happens is this as we begin to truly believe that

We are saved by grace and grace alone here's how this begins to work Paul first applies it to racial prejudice secondly he just

Applies it to sin and he goes hard after it here's what we get to say if we believe that we're saved by grace

And grace alone guess how hard we get to be on sin infinitely aggressively insanely hard on sin I can sit you down you

Can sit me down we can sit in our community group and say what you are doing is wrong what you are doing is

Wicked what you are doing is despicable it's broken it's destroying your family it's destroying you and we can do all of that without

Condemning you you're not condemned because Jesus can save you we also get to be infinitely hopeful in the midst of our own sin in the

Midst of other sin because we believe that Jesus is who makes us okay so that when you're in the middle of sin and

You start noticing it and confessing it so one of the reasons we go really hard after it is because people don't notice it's

Going to be a train wreck it's terrible it's destructive we go hard after it as soon as they go you're right I'm a sinner I need

Help what do I do I'm a terrible person we go Jesus is great he's what makes us okay he's what invited us in he's what fixes

Us you're not more wicked than we are we just had to talk to you tonight two weeks from now y'all be talking to

Me I have a conversation like that recently in my community group where it was like this is we just believe that we're saved by grace through

Jesus that's our hope so we get to be infinitely hopeful in the midst of sin this means that we actually can be united

Our culture currently says the only way to be united is relativism that's the best thing culturally we've come up with which just means

That everybody's right everybody's welcome we're just going to be open minded everything you believe is good and welcome and open and we're all welcome

And if we'll all be relativists then we're all welcome the problem with relativism is you can only welcome other relativists relativists do not

Like me because every time I'm like no I don't believe that at all I think there are people who are definitively wrong and

There are things that are actually wrong in the world and there are actual right answers they're like you're ruining society and it's like

Well I'm no longer welcoming your club but I don't think I'm ruining society you can only be open minded the problem with open mindedness

Is it only welcomes other open minded people but the gospel means that we can say I think you're wrong I think you're causing

Problems I think this is broken and I love you I have hope for you I believe I can learn from you because I

Don't think I'm special I don't think I've accomplished anything I think I've been saved by grace so we have infinite hope in the

Midst of walking with people who are caught up in sin we have infinite hope in our own sin we believe that we can

Walk with people and be absolutely clear about the terribleness of sin and the hope in Jesus because he's what ultimately saves us and

As a bonus we just don't get to take ourselves all that seriously Christians don't take themselves that seriously because why am I a

Christian because God's really good he's got a sense of humor he chose what was low and despised and weak and dumb and here I am I'm not better than

You I'm not smarter than you I actually think you probably got it together more than I do but I just believe that Jesus saves

Sinners and I'm welcome because he's welcomed me that's the hope we have in Christ that we are saved by grace that he did how glorious and

Good he is and that we who have nothing to offer get welcomed and invited in band's going to come back up and we're going to pray and

Then we're going to sing together God we thank you for your goodness towards us that we are saved by grace that we can forever rest in the fact that we brought nothing to our salvation that we have not

Earned anything that we have not been smarter or more humble or understood it better but that we are saved purely because Jesus has become for us righteousness and redemption

And sanctification and wisdom and that on that day we'll boast in him and him alone we ask Lord that that would become so true and real to us that we would be hard on sin welcoming and gracious towards sinners that we would be open to all of those from different

Backgrounds and histories remembering that we've been brought in by you and you alone and nothing we have done or accomplished has made us okay we pray Lord that we would take you and your word very seriously and then

We'd have a really good sense of humor and a really immense joy as we follow you in life we love you we praise you in Jesus name amen and God all Jesus will one may may sell yours

Ty

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.

What God has done through Christ for us

Chet Phillips

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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.

Jesus Changes Your Life

Jesus Changes Your Life

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We're starting a series in the book of Ephesians. So if you want to grab your Bibles and go to the book of Ephesians, that'd be a good place to be this morning. Page 567, if you have one of these white Bibles. If you don't own a Bible, grab one of these, take it home with you.

We want you to have a Bible. If you already have three of these Bibles in your house, bring two back. No, but we're excited to get started in this series this morning. Let's jump right in. What we're going to do today is a little bit different as a way to start the book of Ephesians. So we're going to start reading.

We're going to read the first two verses here. And then we'll kind of talk about how we're going to approach things this morning. So, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. So, Paul is writing it. He puts his name first. He says, Paul, this is who's writing.

And then he says to whom he's writing. He says to the saints, which means those who have been made right by Jesus. That's what saints are, to the church. And he says who are in Ephesus. That's why this is called the book of Ephesians, because it was written to people who lived in Ephesus. Real clever.

And are faithful in Christ Jesus. So, Paul is writing this letter to the people in Ephesus. And he's going to kind of coach them up. He's going to write this letter and walk them through some things that are helpful. So, that's all we're going to read in the book of Ephesians today. Did y'all like it?

Was it good? All right, cool. So, because we're starting to study just the book of Ephesians, we thought we would, in all of our wisdom, go to the book of Acts. So, go to Acts chapter 19. Here's what we're doing. As a church, we're going to walk through the book of Ephesians.

We're going to spend the fall here. And then we're going to break it up a little bit. We'll have two series kind of at the end of the year and one at the beginning of the year. And then we're going to pick back up in Ephesians. We like to walk straight through books of the Bible. We think it helps us out.

We think we grow as a church by learning whole books of the Bible together. We think it helps us out in leadership because I'm the oldest pastor our church has. It's kind of scary, right? So, we just study books of the Bible together because we're not replete with great aged wisdom. We're just going to read what the Bible says and try to talk about it, try to grow in it together. So, we're doing that this fall.

The reason we're going to Acts chapter 19 is because it gives us some background for the book of Ephesians. It kind of lays out for us how the church at Ephesus got started. So, the book of Acts was written by Luke and it's explaining how the church began. When the Holy Spirit came on the believers at the beginning of Acts at Pentecost and how then the Holy Spirit empowered them as missionaries to start churches. And to see people repent of sin and become Christians. And that's what the book of Acts is.

And it follows at some point. It picks up with Paul and it begins to follow him on missionary journeys. And so, what we're going to get to see today in chapter 19 of Acts is how the church at Ephesus got started. And that's helpful to us because it gives us some context. And when you're studying the Bible, context matters. In life, context matters.

If I just told you that yesterday I said angrily, what are you, blind? You better go look at that and change it. Okay? That's a sentence. Context matters. If I told you I was yelling at a referee in the Missouri-South Carolina game when they called a touchdown on a pass that was obviously not caught by a Missouri player.

And I said, what are you, blind? You better look at that and go change it. Okay, context helps us understand that. If I told you I said that to my wife about her outfit before we went on a date together. Okay, yeah, it makes a difference, doesn't it? Like that's, my evening was different yesterday than you thought.

So that's the context matters. And so what we're doing is we're going to Acts chapter 19 to begin to get some context for the book of Ephesians. And here's what we're going to see. The letter written to the church in Ephesus is not specifically addressing anything. So some of the letters we have in the New Testament, Paul's writing or the author's writing to try to correct something or to fix something.

In Corinthians, there's Paul's addressing questions that they have and he's kind of addressing some sin issues going on. In the book of Galatians, he starts off by basically saying, hey, I'm Paul. What the heck? Like he just kind of begins with this like, have y'all lost it? I'm going to show up and hurt someone. And because he's addressing something specific.

But that's not what's happening in Ephesians. Paul's in prison at this point when he's writing. He spends four years in prison and then he's executed. And so Paul's in prison and he's writing to the church in Ephesus. And he's saying, he's just kind of coaching them up. He's just addressing some things that we're going to get to see in Acts where he's just reminding them.

Where they come from and what matters. What he worked with them when he was there. He spends three years in Ephesus and he's just kind of writing them a letter saying, hey, remember these things. That's kind of how he's approaching this. He's just reiterating some of the things that we're actually going to see in this chapter to help us understand. But the biggest point of Ephesians and what I think we'll see clearly as we walk through Acts chapter 19 is that Jesus saves.

Jesus saves you. That he is the one who works. That it's God who works on our behalf and that Christ saves us. The Holy Spirit empowers us, seals us, gives us new birth. And then life changes. That Jesus saves you and then your life changes.

That's how Ephesians is broken up. The first part of Ephesians is just saying, here's who God is. Here's what he's done. He's just reminding them. Here's who Jesus is. And then he goes into, now here's how you live.

Here's how you act. That's what he says in Ephesians 2 where he says, for by grace you have been saved through faith. This is the gift of God. It's not works. You didn't do this on your own so that no one can boast. And then he says, but you're his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.

So what he says is, you didn't earn this. You didn't work to save yourself. Jesus saved you. But now we work. Now we live this out.

Or he says in Ephesians 4, he says, I want you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling you have. So they would live their life looking like they actually believe this, that Jesus has saved them. And so that's what we're going to see, I think, clearly as we walk through Acts. We're going to get to just kind of talk through this story. It's interesting to see how this church got started. So there's some stuff we'll just read and get to talk about.

But I think it will help us understand a little bit of why Paul writes the book of Ephesians the way he does. So let's pick up Acts chapter 19. I'm going to pray. And then we're going to walk through this whole chapter so we've got some work to do. God, we thank you for your word. And we pray that over this season, the life of our church, as we study through the book of Ephesians, we just ask that you would bless it.

That your Holy Spirit would be at work in our lives. To change us. To have your word work on us and work in us. That your Holy Spirit would be at work in our lives to lead us to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. Worthy of the calling through Christ Jesus to be in your family. We ask this in your name.

Amen. Acts chapter 19, verse 1. It's on page 541 in the White Bible. And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth. So Apollos is a guy who'd been in Ephesus.

He is kind of trained up a little bit. He heads over to Corinth. Paul has been in Corinth. And Paul heads back to Ephesus. So it says that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus.

Okay, so yes. Corinth's right there kind of in the middle. Paul passed through the inland country. So that was a long trip. He had to go all the way around this way to get to Ephesus. Nothing apparently happened much there.

He just looped on around. He gets to Ephesus. Ephesus probably has 200,000 to 250,000 people that live in it. By comparison, Columbia has 140. So Ephesus is as big as Charleston and North Charleston combined.

And it was prominent. It was probably, if you were listing out cities in the Roman Empire, you would go Rome, Athens, Ephesus. Ephesus is the most prominent city in Asia, which is modern-day Turkey. And so Paul goes to Ephesus, and one of the things he would do is he would travel to cities and proclaim the gospel and then try to work out movements of the gospel from cities. So Ephesus is a wealthy port city.

And in Ephesus, they have the Temple of Artemis, which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It would have looked something like that. That's a computer rendering. But it was big and fancy and beautiful. And it was one of the main things about Ephesus. And they were very much into the worship of Artemis as their God.

She's the God of that area. And they would have had temple prostitutes that they would have visited as a worship act for her. And it was a very big, very spiritual city. And that's where Paul goes and begins to proclaim the gospel here. And so it says that Paul goes to Ephesus, came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples.

And he said to them, we're going to read this whole thing and then we'll talk through it. He said to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they said, no, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. And he said, into what then were you baptized? They said, into John's baptism. And Paul said, John baptized with baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him.

That is, Jesus. On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them. And they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. They were about 12 men in all. So speaking in tongues either means speaking in languages that everyone can understand or speaking in a language that is not native to your own language.

Or speaking in a language that would be like a heavenly language that no one can understand. And it kind of means all three of those in Scripture. We're not told specifically what it means here. Okay. Paul shows up to Ephesus. He meets some disciples.

So these people would have looked like followers of Jesus. That's what it says. Like they looked like, as far as they weren't practicing Judaism, they weren't practicing the Greek philosophies and religions. They were disciples. But then it says that at some point, and I don't know, we don't know if Paul asked this immediately, if this was just a normal thing he asked when he met people.

Or if at some point he was hanging out and was like, oh, cool, some people who believe. And then after a while was like, wait a second, something's off here. But he asked them, did y'all receive the Holy Spirit when you were baptized or when you believed? And they were like, we don't even know what the Holy Spirit is. We hadn't even heard that was a thing. Which is not the best response.

They're like, no, we don't even know what you're talking about. And he goes, okay, what were you baptized into then? And they said, John's baptism. Well, John's baptism was just a baptism of repentance. He's talking about John the Baptist. You read about him in the beginning of Mark, Luke, Matthew, Book of John.

Like you learn about him in the beginning of the Gospels where John comes and baptizes as a forerunner to Jesus. And all he says is, I'm baptizing you in repentance. Meaning that you're going to come and be baptized because you're a sinner acknowledging your sin. But he proclaims, but there's someone who's coming after me who can actually fix your sin problem. That through the Holy Spirit, he'll baptize you in the Spirit and you will be changed. You'll be born again.

You'll be made new. And so these people had just been practicing repentance. But they hadn't actually believed in Jesus. He says, no, no, no, no. John points to Jesus. And it says immediately, oh, okay.

So they were baptized in the name of Jesus. And then Paul lays his hands on them. They're filled with the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit begins to magnify Christ through them. Begins to show up. Here's why this matters for us.

And here's why it matters for the book of Ephesians. Christianity is not first and foremost life practice. It's not first and foremost morality. It's not first and foremost getting your Acts together. See, these people looked. They were disciples.

He calls them disciples. They looked like followers of Jesus until he kind of got around them. It was like, wait a second. Something's missing here. You see, some of us would say, oh, no, no, no. Like my neighbors are good.

They're good people. They behave like they're, you know, they got it together. And it's like, well, not if they don't have Jesus. Some of us, maybe you grew up in the South. And actually, you maybe have been baptized. You've been baptized just into the baptism of John.

And what I mean by that is you've been baptized into good religious moralism. You've been baptized into behavior. Maybe when you got baptized, it was, I'm going to get my stuff together. I really got to get my life back together. I really got to begin to do this right. And it was just a, I acknowledge that I messed up and I got to get it together.

I need to change. And Paul says, no, no, no, no, no, no. You need Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit to change you. You don't need to change on your own. It's not about you fixing this problem. It's about the Holy Spirit coming in and actually making you new.

It's about a new birth. And so for some of you, the thing you need to get out of today, you need to realize today as we walk through this is that maybe you've been baptized, but maybe you should be baptized again in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins in Christ and be empowered by the Holy Spirit and actually be born again as you believe that Jesus saves you from your sin. Not, I'm going to work really hard. I'm going to be moral. I'm going to live the right life and be okay. So they looked okay, but they weren't baptized into Christ and they weren't filled with the Spirit for life.

Christianity is not just a set of rules. It's not just a religion that we follow and practice. It is about a relationship with the God of the universe. Y'all catch that? That he hangs out with them and they were disciples. They were practicing.

They were following. That's what a disciple was. That's someone who followed a teacher and they were following some of this, but he was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Do y'all know the God of the universe? Is he at work in you? Is the Holy Spirit here?

What's going on? We're not here to be good people. If you are trying to be a part of a church where they're going to help you be a good person, I don't know if we're going to be able to help you that much. That's not our main aim. Our aim is that, is to know Jesus. And then, yeah, he'll change us.

He'll go to work in us. But we've got to know him first. This is why Paul in Ephesians is going to say things like, he says, in him, that's Jesus, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him. So he said, you heard the gospel, you believed in him. You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. So that when you actually believe in Jesus for salvation, the Holy Spirit seals you, changes you, comes in, you have a relationship with God.

And he says, you were dead in your trespasses and sins. But God, who's rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead, made us alive with Christ. And it's through grace you have been saved. So what Paul's going to hammer in Ephesians at the beginning of the book is just, no, no, no, no. Jesus saves. He has to work on our behalf.

He has to seal us and save us. All we do is believe in him and the work that he's done. And then life changes. But if you've been baptized or raised up in some sort of, I'm going to be a good person and church will help me do that. Christianity is about being moral. You've missed it.

You need Jesus to die on your behalf. You need the Holy Spirit to be at work in you. You need a new birth. Life is what Jesus refers to it as in John chapter 3, that you actually need to be made new. And you can't do that. The Holy Spirit has to do it.

Verse 8. And he, that's Paul, entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the way, that's Christianity, before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus. Okay. He goes to the synagogue. That's the Jewish place of belief.

And Paul starts there in most all of his missionary work. And the reason is they already know about God. They already know about sin. They already know about the Messiah. All Paul does is show up and say, Jesus is the Messiah. He just connects one dot for them.

He goes into the Jewish people, into their, to the synagogues. And he begins to say, let me show you the scriptures that you already know and trust. And let me point out how Jesus is the Savior. And then they don't want to hear it. Do you know what he does? He goes to some other people who do.

Now, there's two things we can learn that are very helpful for us here. Just as, this is just observation. It's not a, not a big point. Some of us need to quit preemptively disregarding the word on behalf of those around us. What I mean is, we just say, oh, they won't want to hear it. So we never tell them about it.

That is incorrect. And some of us need to be okay with, once we've told them about Jesus and talked to them about Jesus and moving on to people who do want to hear it. So we get to do like Paul. We get to eventually just say, hey, look, I'm working, I'm trying, but I'm going to go to this person who wants to hear it. I'm going to build with the person who wants to build it. I'm going to show the person in scriptures who wants to see it.

It's okay to move on. It's not okay to move on before people have had the chance to reject them, reject Jesus on their own. So Paul moves on. He moves to the hall of Tyrannus, which was just a big lecture hall. And this continued for two years so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks. So for two years, Paul sits in a lecture hall and just teaches about God, about what he's done, about who Jesus is, about the kingdom of God, about the Messiah.

Just for two years begins to just send out the gospel of what Jesus has done to teach about the spiritual reality that the Holy Spirit works in us, changes us through the gospel, that through Jesus, we can actually be made right with the God of the universe. Verse 11. So during this time, it says, and God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul. So that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. That's a crazy sentence. Paul wore an apron.

No, I'm sorry. God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul so that even handkerchiefs or aprons. Y'all ever watch somebody on TV like praying over a rag and if you give them a certain amount of money, they'll like mail it to you. You ever seen this? Paul started that, you guys. Here's what I want us to see here.

There's a couple of things that I think are really helpful in this text. When Luke wrote this, I think sometimes there's a tendency when we read the book of Acts, and we should do this. We should read the book of Acts and then look at ourselves. If you're reading the book of Acts and you are immediately discounting everything that happens in it, there's something wrong with your theology. If you're going, well, yeah, but technically God doesn't really do that anymore. It's like, stop it.

God does. He does these things. But also there's a tendency to read the book of Acts and act like it is prescriptive for how God works in every situation and then feel terrible. But that's not even what it says. Luke's writing this and he says God was doing extraordinary things. Luke doesn't say God was doing what he always does everywhere we went.

We just read in one verse that Paul traveled from Corinth all the way to Ephesus, and we weren't told anything about that trip. You know why? I don't think much happened on it. I don't think Paul was healing people with aprons. I think that would have been told to us in the loop. It just said he traveled.

Maybe he got sick. Like, we don't know. He got, you know, he got to eat some really good food in one of those cities. But that's not going to tell us that. It just was normal stuff. But then he did extraordinary things.

God did. God did extraordinary things through the hands of Paul so that diseased people were healed and evil spirits left at aprons and handkerchiefs. Here's what I think we ought to respond to this. Here's one of my prayers. I have a few prayers for our church family. I have a few prayers for myself.

I pray specifically that I'll, that God will keep me faithful, that I'll just get to keep doing this for a long time. I pray specifically that you keep me far from sin, that my last day in the ministry is a good day. That's the thing I pray. That the last day, my last day in the ministry, my last day of serving Jesus is a good day. It's not burnout. It's not train wreck.

It's not shipwreck. It's a good day. And I pray that I'll get to be a part of some of this. God doing extraordinary things. And I think that's something we ought to pray together as a church. You're going to get one run at this of following Jesus and living a life for him.

You're going to get one shot at this before we hang it up. Before we go out with our boots on, hopefully. And I just pray that we'll get to be a part of that. Some stuff that we can't explain, where the Holy Spirit was at work, where God was doing extraordinary things. Stuff that you tell your friends and they think you made it up. Yeah.

Let's ask for some of that. But it was extraordinary. God was showing his power as he began this church, that he was working mightily. And it says, Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists. Okay, itinerant means traveled around. Jewish means they practiced Judaism and were Jewish people of heritage and line.

Exorcists means they casted out demons. So like the exorcism, you were correct. That's what they were. They traveled around and did that. They undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims. Okay, so they traveled around trying to cast out demons and they find out that Paul doesn't even have to travel.

He just sends an apron. And they were like, that sounds awesome. I want some of that. So all they started doing was just claiming Jesus's name by whom Paul proclaims. They don't know Jesus. This is secondhand.

He's just the new magic trick. He's the more powerful magic. And that's one of the things that was going on in Ephesus at this time was they were very spiritual. And they believed a lot in the occult and a lot in magic and a lot in spiritual activity. And so these Jewish exorcists just start claiming the name of Jesus over things. But they don't know Jesus.

So it says seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. So they were claiming the name of Jesus. They were saying in the name of Jesus by whom Paul proclaims, leave. They were exercising some sort of a demon. There was some sort of demonic activity going on with a person and they were claiming Jesus over it. Now it gets crazy.

But the evil spirit answered them, Jesus, I know. And Paul, I recognize. But who are you? And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. All right, real quick, let's pause.

I'm going to go ahead and venture a guess that most of us in this room are Western, grew up in the U.S., have been affected by the Enlightenment and Western thought and culture. And we don't really have a place for spiritual stuff. Angels, demons, sure, they're good on that TV show with those long-haired guys that fight them or whatever. But that's about it. What's that, Supernatural? Yeah, they're good on that show.

Cool. But otherwise, we don't really. We'll watch some movies about them. But it's all like fictional horror movies. This isn't a real thing that happens. If you are a Christian, your thought process on that has to change because the Bible disagrees with you.

That you actually believe that there is a God, a spiritual realm that you cannot see and that there are good beings, that the Holy Spirit goes to work in our hearts to change us. And the Bible also teaches that there are evil spiritual beings in a spiritual reality that we cannot see. And I think the book of Ephesians is going to help us because Paul says this a good bit in Ephesians. He actually writes and says, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, meaning human issues, 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.

So Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, is reminding them. And they already know about the spiritual world. They have a leg up on us in that they believe in this whole stuff that they can't see. And he says, no, no, no. Our fight isn't just with human issues. We actually have an enemy that doesn't want people to believe this gospel.

And he begins to coach them up on how to walk in them. Okay. So let's go back. This isn't just a story. This is a real thing that happened. These guys go in and they begin to claim the name of Jesus over this person who has a demonic spirit.

And he says, Jesus, I know, which is true. All the demons know Jesus because he's the king of everything. Paul, I recognize. I've heard of that guy. Not super important. Who are you?

And then he beats up all seven of them. So they left naked and wounded. Okay, guys. I grew up in Edgefield, South Carolina, most of my life. One of the things we used to do is we'd go hang out at horse shows where they would sell horses. And then my redneck friends or myself would get in fights.

I've been in a few fights. I'm not amazing at it. I haven't been in as many fights as some of you. I've been in more fights than others. I know a few things about fighting. Here's one of the basic rules they teach you early on.

If you enter into a fight with pants on and you leave the fight with your pants off, you lost. It's just a basic. It's one of the first. It's like first ten rules of fighting. These guys got owned. It says he mastered them.

That's where that phrase getting owned comes from. They actually beat the pants off of them. That's where that phrase comes from. I actually don't know if either of those are true, but it seems like it could be. They got just worked. I've seen guys get in a fight before and they get beat up.

And, you know, you try to encourage them. They're your friend. And you're like, man, you got in a few good licks before. Well, you got in a few good licks. Like you just try to encourage them. If you were friends of these guys, you'd just be like.

I'll help you find your pants. Like I don't have much. It didn't work out well for them. So here's what happens. This happens. These Jewish people had been exorcists, been traveling around.

I'm assuming it had been somewhat effective. They get owned. And it says, and fear. Oh, and this became, this is verse 17. And this, this event, became known to all the residents of Ephesus. Both Jews and Greeks and fear fell upon them all.

And the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. They see that Jesus is the ruling spiritual power. That he is real. That he is real. And he is at work in Paul. And he's at work in his church.

That's one of the things Paul writes over and over in Ephesus, in the book of Ephesians. That he's the head of all rule and authority. That we've been sealed in him. That we're seated with him above all rule and authority. That we're in Christ. And we don't have to fear these spiritual realities.

We need to be aware of them. But that we can be protected in Christ. And so, it says, also, many of those who were now believers came confessing and divulging their practices. That many of those who were now believers came confessing and divulging their practices. What that's saying is that the Christians began to openly confess. People were being saved.

The Holy Spirit was at work in them. And they were just showing up and saying, here's what I've been like. Here's what I've done. Here's my sin. Here's what I used to be a slave to. Here's what I used to do.

I used to visit the temple prostitutes. Or I've been in an adulterous relationship. Or I've been cheating on my financial reporting. Or I've been cheating people in business deals. Or I've been treating my spouse this way. Or they became openly confessing their sin.

Now, my dad, when I was growing up, if people said too much about their personal lives, he would go. I'd be darned if I'd have said that. That was his response to you oversharing. He wasn't very compassionate. If you said something that was a little too much, he'd just be like, keep that to yourself. That was it.

That was his response. And I think a lot of us have that same general kind of like, I want Jesus to save me from my sin. But I'm openly divulging my practices. I'm not doing that. This is actually something the Holy Spirit authors in us. And it's something that we want to see take place in our own lives.

This isn't something you want to see happen in your group. It's something you want to see happen in your life. Here's why. The person who can openly confess their sin is free and believes the gospel that Jesus saves sinners. That's why they come openly confessing. Because all the stuff that used to would have damned them to hell, all the stuff that used to enslave them, all the stuff that used to own them and control them has no power any longer.

Because Jesus Christ died for it. They've been sealed with the Holy Spirit. And it will not stick to them. They will not be held accountable for it. They are no longer guilty. They are no longer covered in shame.

They are free. And they openly confess and divulge their sinful practices. And we want that. And Paul covers that. He talks about that in Ephesians. He says, don't become partners with them.

He's talking about the sinfulness. He says, at one time you were darkness. But now you're light in the world. Walk as children of light. Try to discern what's pleasing to the Lord. And take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness.

But instead expose them. And then he says, everything that's brought into the light becomes light. Everything that's brought into the light becomes light. That the sin that used to own you, that you feel like right now you have to hide, when you bring it into the light, the light wins. And that sin actually shines to point to the great goodness of Jesus Christ who saves sinners. It becomes light.

And that's why this group of people, as they were saved and changed by the Holy Spirit, he began to author in them confession. It's one of the things we're called to in the book of Ephesians. That we would know who Jesus is and that he saves. And then we would begin to change. That life would change as Jesus works in us. But it keeps going.

Verse 19. So these people used to practice magic. They would have done divination. They would have cast spells. They would have read palms. They would have done all these kind of occult practices.

And when they realized that Jesus is king of everything, they just come and burn all their books. And it's 50,000 pieces of silver. Some of you may have a version of the Bible that says 50,000 drachmas. You know what a drachma is? It's a piece of silver. And a piece of silver or drachma is one day's wage.

So this was 50,000 days worth of work, which means 137 years of work was just burned up. 137 years of work. I mean, let me help you picture that. If you worked starting today straight for 137 years, does that help? No, it's the same as if the average income, household income in South Carolina is $40,000, right around there. That means it's $5.5 million.

It's 180 brand-new Dodge Rams. That would be like if our whole parking lot and a little bit more out in the grass over there was brand-new Dodge Rams. I mean, so new they still had the balloon on them that made you want to buy it. You're like, that ram looks good, but look at that balloon. If people became Christians and they were like, I'm a Christian, and they just torched their Dodge Ram, it'd be that. I don't know why you'd have to burn your Dodge Ram to be a Christian, but I'm trying to help you picture the value.

That'd be like if every, I looked at the values of the houses in my neighborhood. That's 55 houses in my neighborhood. That's if like my whole street just said I'm a Christian now and burned their house down. Again, I'm just trying to help you see the value here. So some of you, like, can you imagine how much life had to change for these people if they're burning thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, 137 years worth of work?

They're just burning it? Do you see that? That the Holy Spirit comes in, that the gospel becomes real, that Jesus claims heart and then life changes. They just said it's not worth it anymore. It has no value to me anymore. Some of us right now in this room, you are saying, I want to follow Jesus, but I want to hold on to this.

You're trying to shield parts of your life from Jesus. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I want, I want you, but I don't want you to mess with this. It would, it would affect my life too much. My, my boyfriend would break up with me. I'd have to quit my job.

My income level would drop. Um, I'd have to get rid of some things that mean a lot to me. They've been passed down in my family. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And that's not how it works. And I don't know what it is, but some of us in this room have some things we need to burn.

We need to be gone. Don't need to have a part of our life anymore. Some of us in this room have some things that we need to openly confess. And you need to begin right now praying that the Holy Spirit would empower that in you. That you would get to experience what it is like when the Spirit of the living God sets you free from sin. So much so that you can talk about it and then it becomes light in your life.

And some of you in this room have some things you need to go home and get rid of. Some things we've been holding on to. Because what happens when Jesus comes in and the Holy Spirit goes to work in us is that life changes. And I love the way Luke writes this. Verse 20. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

Prevail means powerfully overcome. Honestly, that's our prayer for the study in Ephesians. That's our prayer for the life of us as Christians. Is that the word would prevail mightily. That when the thing in your life that you were trying to defend faces the word of God. That the word of God would win.

That when the stuff in our hearts that we want to hold on to comes up against what the Bible says. That the Bible would win. That the gospel would overwhelm it. And the word of God would prevail mightily. 21. Now after these events Paul resolved in the spirit.

So prayerfully discerned is what he's supposed to do. To pass through Macedonia. And I don't. I never know how to pronounce this word. Achaia. There you go.

And go to Jerusalem. Saying. After I have been there. I must also see Rome. And having sent into Macedonia. Two of his helpers.

Timothy and Erastus. He himself stayed in Asia for a while. About that time. There arose no little disturbance. That means a big disturbance. Concerning the way.

For a man named Demetrius. A silversmith. Who made silver shrines for Artemis. And brought no little business to the craftsmen. That means brought big business to the craftsmen. These he gathered together.

With the workmen in similar trades. And said. Men. You know that from this business. This business. You know.

From this business. We have our wealth. And you see and hear. That not only in Ephesus. But in almost all of Asia.

This Paul. Has persuaded and turned away. A great many people. Saying that gods. Made with hands. Are not gods.

Crazy. And there's danger. Not only that this trade of ours. May come into disrepute. But also.

That the temple. Of the great God Artemis. May be counted. As nothing. And that she may be deposed. From her magnificence.

She. Whom all Asia. And the world. Worship. This guy named Demetrius. He's a silversmith.

His whole. Trade. Gets messed up. Because. Too many people. Are becoming Christians.

And they've stopped believing. And worshiping. And following. Idols. They've stopped believing. Artemis.

They've quit. Worshipping. Artemis. His whole. The economic system. Of this place.

Is breaking apart. Because the gospel. Has spread. So there are people. Taking shrines. Of Artemis.

Walking outside. And throwing them away. Or bringing them to him. And saying. Hey. Can you melt this down?

Make some drachmas. I don't need your silver shrine anymore. Some pieces. Would be great. Some people. Maybe.

Just were like. I don't want anything. I don't want to spend it. I don't want to have it. I want to throw it away. I'm not selling it.

I don't want somebody else. To worship this thing. It's gone. I'm going to toss it in the ocean. And then I'll fish around it. Like.

The economic system. Is changing. And he's saying. No. No. No.

No. No. No. No. No. We can't have this.

Happen. So. He goes and tells everybody. Wouldn't it be beautiful. If the Holy Spirit went to work in us. Went to work in this.

In the church. In this area. Which is not just this church. But it's all the churches that faithfully follow Jesus. So much so.

That the economic system of Columbia. Looked different. You know. It starts with us. If you say. Yeah.

I want that. Has your economics. Household system. Started looking different. Because of Jesus. That's how that works.

That we would begin to. Help people. When we wouldn't otherwise have. That we would begin to. To spend money in different areas. Or.

Or change the way we. View. Like. That. That our lives would change. That Jesus would save us.

The Holy Spirit would empower us. And our lives. Would change. Verse 28. When they heard this. They were enraged.

And were crying out. Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. So the city. Was filled with confusion. And they rushed together. Into the theater.

The theater held about 20,000 people. It was a big theater. Dragging with them. Gaius and Aristarchus. Macedonians. Macedonians.

Who were Paul's companions in travel. But when Paul wished to go in among the crowd. The disciples would not let him. Paul was like. I'm going to go talk to him. And they were like.

You're going to sit down. Because I don't think it's going to go well for you. They wouldn't let him. And even some of the Asiarchs. Those are people who were just Roman officials. Who weren't Christians.

Who were friends of his. Sent to him. And were urging him. Not to venture into the theater. Again. Small point.

Christians ought to have friends who aren't Christians. That was it. That was my point. Now some cried out one thing. And some another. For the assembly was in confusion.

And most of them. Most of them. Did not know why they had come together. They just saw a riot. They started yelling things. People were yelling.

Great is our midst of the Ephesians. And someone was like. We need a living wage. And someone else was like. Women's suffrage. And someone yelled.

Free chicken on Fridays. Because they didn't know. They were just hyped up. They all went into the theater. And started shouting. Most of them.

Did not know why they were there. But they were super ticked about it. Okay. There is something. That's going to rally them all together. Here in a second.

And we'll see that this has. Been a problem for thousands of years. Most of them. Did not know why they were there. Why they had come together. Verse 33.

Some of the crowd. Prompted Alexander. Whom the Jews had put forward. And Alexander. Motioning with his hand. Wanted to make a defense.

To the crowd. So I don't know what. Motioning with his hand was. I don't know if he stood. I think this is what. I would have gone with.

Maybe he did like a. I'm going to talk. Like. I don't know. I don't know what he did. He motioned with his hands.

Trying to show them. Hey. Let me. Let me give a response. To y'all yelling. And being angry.

Verse 34. But when they recognized. That he was a Jew. For about two hours. They all cried out. With one voice.

Great. Is Artemis. Of the Ephesians. Do you see what rallied them together? Some good old fashioned racism. They saw that he was a Jew.

So they all yelled. For two hours. Great. Is Artemis. Of the Ephesians. They didn't want to listen to him.

Because he wasn't their type of people. That's. That's how. That's why throughout this. John. Lucas kept saying.

The Jews and the Greeks. The Jews and the Greeks. The Jews and the Greeks. And then he gets here and says. When the Greeks saw that he was a Jew. They yelled.

They yelled. Great. Is Artemis. Of the Ephesians. That doesn't even rhyme. Run.

We looked it up in the. In the. In the Greek. Doesn't even rhyme. It actually sounds kind of similar. Artemis and Ephesus.

It's not a good chant. But it's like they said. When they saw he was a Mexican. They chanted USA. For two hours. I have never been.

That excited about anything. To chant the same thing. For two hours. I go to Carolina games. Like one a year. And by the time sandstorm's done.

I'm done. Like I'm tired of spinning that rag. Like. And if they ever set up the little. The ball. And the wind knocks it over.

I'm like. Put it together. I only jump up and down so long. But these people shouted. Great. Is Artemis.

Of the Ephesians. For two hours. There was great racial tension. In this city. Paul addresses that. In Ephesians.

One of the things. He begins to try. To help the believers see. Is that because you belong to Jesus. Race isn't an issue anymore. That he's destroyed the hostility.

That's actually what he. The way he words it. If I can find it. For he himself is our peace. Who has made us both one. And has broken down in his flesh.

That's Jesus. The dividing wall of hostility. By abolishing the law of commandments. Expressed in ordinances. That he might create in himself. One new man.

In place of the two. So making peace. And might reconcile us both to God. In one body through the cross. Thereby killing the hostility. When Christians try to come together.

Race is an issue. Not was. Is. Because we have a lot of racial preferences. And cultural preferences. That we're unwilling to lay down.

That become very difficult for us to work together. And Paul says. No, no, no. Y'all got to figure it out. Because we have one new man. There's unity.

And Jesus has killed the hostility. And that was very important to those in Ephesus. You know how many people. Greek. Believers. Who had become Christians.

That had to give up Artemis. And how much of their history. And their life that was. Had been there for 500 years. How much they had celebrated Artemis their whole life. And how much they were like.

Well it's just part of our culture. And it had to die. To follow Jesus. They had to lay it down. In order to walk with him. And be able to welcome others.

Do you know how much Jewish history was entrenched. And these Jewish believers. Just had to let stuff die. So that they could be one new man. But they yell for two hours.

Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. I'm looking forward to it. We're going to get to spend some time. Talking about race. In the book of Ephesians. I think it will be good for us.

It will be hard. Verse 35. When the town clerk. Had quieted the crowd. He said. Men of Ephesus.

Who is there who does not know. That the city of the Ephesians. Is temple keeper of the great Artemis. And the sacred stone. That fell from the sky. Seeing then.

That these things cannot be denied. You ought to be quiet. And do nothing rash. For you have brought. These men here. Who are neither sacrilegious.

Nor blasphemers. Of our goddess. And if therefore. Demetrius and the craftsmen. With him. Have a complaint against anyone.

The courts are open. And there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges. Against one another. But if you seek anything further.

It shall be settled. In the regular assembly. For we are in danger. Of being charged. With rioting today. Since there is no cause.

That we can give. To justify this commotion. And when he had said these things. He dismissed. The assembly. We're not going to spend much time.

Talking about this. But this clerk. Had it together. He apparently had some authority. He shuts down the whole thing. And sends everybody home.

And knew what the issue was. He was like. Y'all brought them here. Under a pretense. We're going to get in trouble. With the Romans.

For having a riot. And if Demetrius has a problem. He can go to the courts. Go home. Verse 20. I mean chapter 20.

After that. The uproar ceased. Paul sent the disciples. After encouraging them. He said farewell. And departed for Macedonia.

That's Paul's time in Ephesus. He shows up later. One time. Talks to the Ephesian elders. That's in this chapter. Chapter 20.

He writes two letters to Timothy. Who is a pastor. In Ephesus. And he writes the book of Ephesians. And in the book of Ephesians. He says.

Jesus saves. He goes to work in us. And what we believe about him matters. Our theology matters. That's what he showed up. And corrected with those disciples.

He says. Wait. Wait. Wait. Y'all are thinking about this wrong. You need to know.

The reality of what's going on. You need to understand. How Jesus works. And. Then life changes.

That we would walk in a manner. Worthy. Of the gospel. That's our hope. That's our prayer. For this series.

That as we walk through it. We would see Jesus change lives. That we would grow. In our knowledge of the gospel. That we would grow. In our understanding.

Of right doctrine. And then. Our lives would change. But for some of us. This morning. The band's going to come back up.

And we're going to respond. We're going to respond. Today. We're going to act. Today. Today.

Some of you need to repent of sin. Have Jesus save you. And the Holy Spirit make you new. That you've grown up in the church. You know things about Jesus. But you don't know Jesus.

The Holy Spirit has never gone to work in your heart. You have never been born again. Saved by grace. Through the accomplishment of Jesus Christ on the cross. And you need to. You need to place your faith in Jesus.

That what Paul says. That when you heard the word of the gospel. And you believed. You were sealed with the Holy Spirit. And some of you right now. That needs to happen.

That you're here this morning. Because of moralism. Because you're here to be a good person. And to behave well. And to get your life together. And you need Jesus to change you.

You're not going to be able to do it. Some of us here. Need to confess openly. That in a minute. When the band's singing. You're going to need to get up.

And go walk over and talk to somebody. You're going to need to tell them. That something's going on in your life. That you've been hiding. That you've allowed to have power. And control over you.

You need to bring it into the light. And celebrate. That Jesus Christ saves sinners. You need to bring it into the light. So that it becomes light.

And so that you can be free from it. Everyone in this room is a sinner. And everyone in this room needs Jesus. To save you. And he died. To set us free from sin.

So that it would no longer have to follow us around. You would no longer have to tell yourself. Yeah they love me. But only because they don't know this. Yeah they accept me. But only because I keep this a secret.

That's a lie. That we get to be open. We get to be honest. We get to confess. And divulge our practices. And be real about where we are.

Because Jesus Christ saved sinners. He didn't call us together to be good. And to behave well. And we need to ask the Holy Spirit. To author in us. To work in us.

To empower us. To confess. Some of you have. For lack of a better phrase. Some books that need to be burned. You have some things in your life.

That just need to be torched. You've been holding on to. You've been saying. Well it's not that big a deal. It's okay. Because I you know.

It's just this. It's a memento. It means like. Whatever. Some kind of thing that's going on. And the way you're living.

You just got to get rid of. Because when Jesus comes in. Lives change. And I want to be real honest with you. If that's not true for you. If Jesus hasn't been disruptive.

If he just slid into your life. And everything looked the same. That's not Jesus. Jesus. When Demetrius says. God's made with hands.

Aren't gods. Some of us. Have a little handmade God. That we've named Jesus. But it goes where we tell it to go.

And it does what we tell it to do. And it sits where we put it. And we can go back. And visit it again later. And we can do what we want to with it. Or we can leave it the heck alone.

That's not how Jesus works. He's disruptive. He's a king. He does not do what you tell him to. And for some of us. If your life has been.

I follow Jesus. But he only ever moves. When you tell him to move. And he only ever works. When you ask him to work. And he only ever is present.

When you want him to be. That's not how Jesus works. Some of us need to repent. Confess. Ask Jesus to save us. And to disrupt our lives.

To change our finances. To change our life goals. To go to work in us. So that we can live. And walk in a manner worthy. Of the gospel.

The band's going to sing. Some of us are going to repent. And become Christians. And in a couple weeks. You'll get to be baptized. Into Jesus.

Maybe you were baptized before. Into good behavior. Good behavior will not save you. But Jesus will. And the Holy Spirit can. And we'll baptize you in Jesus.

And we'll celebrate with you. Some of you have some sin. You need to confess. You're going to need to say out loud. For the first time. Something you've never said to anyone.

But that you've been telling yourself. You cannot be free from. And that is not the gospel. Some of you have some things in your life. That you're going to have to get rid of. But ultimately.

It's all joy. And it's all something. That leads us to Christ. Because we get to have a real relationship. With a living God. Who goes to work in our hearts and souls.

To make us new. And then we're going to take communion. And communion for us. Is a celebration. A reminder of the gospel. That we.

That as often as we. Break the bread. And drink the cup. We proclaim Jesus' death. Until he comes. That we gather regularly as a church.

And we take communion. Because we're celebrating. That we are people. Who needed the death of Jesus. To be okay. We've recently moved the tables.

Up to the front. And the reason for that. Is that we get to proclaim. Openly to each other. As we take communion. That when you walk up here.

And people can see you. You're celebrating the fellowship. Of our church. The connection you have. With each other. And you're proclaiming the gospel.

Which is. I'm a sinner. Who needs. A savior. This band is going to sing. We're going to repent.

We're going to confess. We're going to become Christians. We're going to take communion. We're going to celebrate. That Jesus Christ died for sinners. And that in him.

In him alone. We have hope. Let's pray. God. We ask that the same Holy Spirit. That was at work.

In the believers. In Ephesus. Would be at work. In this room today. That you would work. In our hearts.

Just as you did there. That you would do here. That there would be confession. That there would be repentance. That there would be forgiveness. That there would be freedom.

And that you would move. In extraordinary ways. We ask this in Jesus name. You guys stand and sing with us.