Chosen Before the Beginning

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Today we're going to begin a year-long journey. I know that you might not have woken up expecting to take a year-long journey, but here we are. We're going to do a year-long journey. We're going to go through the book of Ephesians. This is our very first week on it. We're going to spend many, many, many weeks. Most of the year we will skip the summer, but most of the fall, or most of the spring and most of the fall. We're going to be on Ephesians. And so this is a letter to the Ephesians to kind of tell you a little bit about what Ephesians is like. I want to tell you about a hill, a very tall hill in the north of England. It's not a mountain. They don't have mountains in England. They have very tall hills, and it's called roseberry topping, which is so British to call a hill roseberry topping. And although to get up to the top of roseberry topping, it's only a 45-minute hike, but when you get to the top,

as you can see behind me, man, it is breathtaking. It is beautiful. On a clear day, you can see more than 10 miles in every direction. The North Sea is actually 10 miles from there, and you can see the North Sea, not in this picture, but if I would just pan to the right, you can see the North Sea there. You can see patterns in the land. You can see how the rolling hills are divided up by different crops or different animals that they are keeping, a lot of sheep. You can see little communities dotted throughout, just these little collections of homes and shops and all of that. You can see about four or five different communities from the top of roseberry topping. Ephesians is like being on the top of roseberry topping.

It is less focused with one particular situation in one particular church, and it really takes you up high on a broad view to talk about some really big things. Who God is, what He has done, why He has done it. It helps us see who we are. It helps us see where we are. It helps us see where we are going. Big, big things. And the way Ephesians sums this up, and it is this thing that it happened several times throughout the book, it is this idea of unity with Jesus. Unity with Jesus or union with Christ. Several times, and I think it is over 25 times in the book of Ephesians, it has the phrase in Christ or in Him, meaning Christ. So unity with Jesus becoming one with Him. But to really see it, to really kind of let it sink in, you have got to come down off of roseberry topping. You need to see how this union intersects or plays into every part of our lives.

And so that is what we are going to do. Over the next four weeks, we are going to be covering Ephesians chapter 1. Ephesians 1, it is not that many verses. It is only about 23 verses. Today, we are going to be just in the first six verses. I am really excited to go through Ephesians. Usually, whenever we go through Scripture, we are either going through a lot of times we cover a lot of narratives. So we cover the life of Jesus, or we cover an Old Testament story, or something like that. So we end up covering like 15 or 20 verses on a Sunday, just because we are just kind of hitting. When we did our series through Acts, for example, that was a lot of narrative, like a lot of story that we just needed to kind of truck through. So we are killing like a chapter a Sunday. With Ephesians, the whole book is only six chapters, and we are taking a whole year on it. So I am very, very excited to kind of just do

kind of a deep dive and look into it. So in Ephesians 1, it begins to introduce us to this union with Christ from a few different angles. But before we jump all the way in, we have to look at the first two verses, because it kind of gives us the intro to the book. It says, Paul, this is Ephesians chapter 1 verses 1 and 2, 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.

I want to give you a very, very short background on the book of Ephesians, on the letter to the Ephesians. The Ephesian church, it is in a place called Ephesus, and the Ephesian church, and we get a few details of what it was like in the Ephesian church from Acts 19 and 20. So if you want to read them this week, it is still kind of interesting. And it gives us this background, this understanding that Ephesians, the letter to the Ephesians, this church in Ephesus is revival-born. This church is revival-born, meaning that whenever you read Acts 19 and 20, there are some crazy stories in there, like absolutely bananas. There are people casting out demons, and they don't know the Lord, they just know Paul, so they'll cast out demons in the name of Jesus whom Paul proclaims. That's how they were casting out demons in Ephesus. It's weird stuff. People are being healed by touching handkerchiefs

that Paul touched. Weird. There is a bunch of magicians that all become believers, and so they all gather together. And I'm just citing Acts 19 and 20 at this point. These magicians come together, and they take all their books, and it's about $6 million worth, and they all put them in a big fire, and they light the whole thing. So this is Ephesus, and this is all within like two years. And there's a big riot. It's kind of a crazy story, really. And so this church is kind of coming up out of this revival that just kind of happens, right, in the middle of Ephesus. Ephesus was not particularly spiritual. It wasn't like all these people just waiting to form a church or something. This is a bunch of people who just weren't following the Lord at all, and then boom. Revival starts. Church grows. Happens. Okay, here we are. The other thing to know about Ephesus in particular was that it was

very metropolitan. Very metropolitan. It is a major city in what is now Turkey. It was a circular letter. So this Ephesian letter that we have, letter to the Ephesians, it was intended for the church in Ephesus to receive it and then pass it on, right, through a bunch of different churches. In Revelation, in chapters two and three, there are seven churches that are cited. Okay, it's a letter revelation. The book of Revelation is a letter written to seven different churches, right. So it's like, you know, Smyrna, Pergamum, Ephesus. All of those cities are minor cities all around Ephesus. Ephesus was the big metropolitan city. It would be like how, you know, it's like Dallas, Fort Worth, but then there's all these little communities around it, right. And so if somebody were going to write a letter to all the churches in the entire area, they're going to, they might write it to a church in Dallas and they'll say,

okay, after you read it, pass it on. And after they read it, they pass it on, right. And they kind of know where these different churches are. So Ephesians is a circular letter. And it's also, just so you kind of get where we are here, in the book of, in the, in the, yeah, the books of first and second, Timothy. Timothy is pastoring a church whenever he receives those letters. The church he's pastoring is in Ephesus, same place. Okay. So Ephesus is kind of a big deal. It's in Acts. It's in Ephesians, obviously. It's in first Timothy. It's second Timothy. It's also in Revelation. So Ephesus is kind of a, it's kind of all over the New Testament. And this is,

this is a letter for instruction, right. This is, this is across several different churches. So, so that's why it's going to cover big things and why we're really not going to get a lot of particulars. So you read a different letter. Maybe you read like the letter to the Romans, for example. At the end of the letter, there's going to be all these people citing, like he's citing all these different people. In the book of Ephesians, that does not happen. And it's because it's intended for several other churches. Okay. And so that's why the beginning of the letter, first two verses, I'm Paul, you're the Ephesian church, we're, we're excited. And then he goes immediately into a long blessing. This blessing goes from verse three all the way to verse 14. And we're only covering three, four, five, and six this morning. But this big blessing, it goes straight into that. And I want to just read it kind of together,

verses three through six. And so I just want to, just want to read that. And then we'll, we'll kind of unpack it. 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 to 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. Okay. That, that's one big part of a big blessing that, that we're going to unpack today. As we look at this blessing over this week and the next couple of weeks, we're going to see that this blessing actually follows a Trinitarian formula. So at the beginning of the blessing, we're getting Father God in the middle of the blessing,

we're getting the work of Jesus Christ. And at the end of the blessing, we're getting the work of the Spirit. Okay. So these verses that we're going to cover today are about what, they're going to really focus on what Father God did kind of through Christ or in Christ. Right. But, but we're going to kind of see the, the impetus there. Right. So in verse three, 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. Okay. You might remember that I said that in, in Ephesus, there were a bunch of magicians who got together and burned their books. Right. $6 million worth. Remember that? In Ephesus in particular, there was this, there was a lot of, of emphasis placed on, on spiritual realities, on magic. Right. And there was a lot of concern actually in that area, not just in the Ephesian church, but a lot of

churches in the area where there was concern like, if I follow God, is he, is he going to be strong enough to ward off these other demons that, or these other, you know, evil spirits that, that are plaguing me? Is he going to be enough? And so you're going to see this a lot in the middle of Ephesians, but you even see it here, blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. So Father God has blessed us in Jesus Christ with everything. He's not held back. He's already kind of lavished all these gifts upon us. And this kind of reminds us of, there's another verse in 2nd Peter 1:3. It says, his divine power has granted us all things that pertain to life and godliness. And so this idea that, that God is blessing us with everything that we need, right, everything that we could ever kind of ask for or, or every kind of supply that we need, God is blessing us with that. And the everything that he is talking about is lined out

in verses 4 and 5. Okay, verse 4, it says, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. I really want to, I want to stop down here, and I want to, I want to look at those verses, and I want you to see what I see. Okay, because sometimes, man, we're reading the beginning of Ephesians, and it's just kind of, we're reading these words, and they sound really cool and spiritual, but it's, it's kind of white noise. Like we don't really think about what these verses are saying. Okay, and I don't blame you. I do the same thing, you know, like I'm reading the introduction of a book, I'm just kind of skimming through that thing, and I'm like, okay, we're, okay, we got to move through this, and we'll get to the meat. The meat's starting, and it's, it's, it's here in verse 4, and what it says is,

and I really, I kind of want, I want you to see this, Father God has set our identity as holy and blameless from eternity past. Okay, say it again. That's what verse 4 is saying. Verse 4 is saying that our Father who art in heaven, the hallowed be his name, has set already in the past, has set our identity, if we are in him, he has set our identity as holy and blameless, and he did it before the foundation of the world. Okay, that's a mouthful, that's a big deal. That's not a small thing, that's a huge thing, holy and blameless. What does it mean to be holy and blameless? If you're holy, then you are set apart. Okay, a lot of times we talk about like people being holier than now, and so holy kind of gets associated with being like a goody two shoes or something, but really all holy means is set apart. Okay, and when it says saints, that's really the the noun form of the

word holy. Okay, saints in the Bible, when it says that word, it means holy ones. That's all that word is, is just the the noun form of holy. If you're holy, you are, you are set apart, you are a saint. If you are blameless, the reason you cannot be blamed, catch this, the reason you cannot be blamed is not because you are a good person, or because you don't kill people, or because I don't know, whatever kind of qualifies you and your mind is a good person. That's not why you can't be blamed. You cannot be blamed because God has set upon you, over you, through you, on you a new identity. Okay, so that that blameless part, it's not because of you did anything, not because, but it's because you cannot be blamed because a new identity is put upon you. This is what we call imputed righteousness. Okay, imputed righteousness. If you ever hear anybody say that, you kind of

know what they're talking about now, but what it means is that God is choosing you to stand before Him as holy and blameless, and He knows, He knows, Father God knows the only way that you will be able to stand before Him holy and blameless is if He gives that to you. That's the only way you're going to survive. That's the only way that you're able to stand there is because Father God has put a new identity on top of you. Second Corinthians 5 21, it says, for our sake, He made Him to be sin, He made Christ to be sin, who knew no sin, who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. Okay, this idea that we're talking about with unity in Christ, unity with Christ, if we are in union with Him, it means that we actually take on Jesus's holiness and blamelessness upon ourselves. I say we take it, it's given to us as an identity, already holy and blameless.

And you might be thinking to yourself, I don't deserve that title. Okay, you didn't see me getting ready this morning. You didn't see how much I yelled at my family today. It's okay. It's all right, you don't deserve it. The good news is you didn't deserve it before you yelled at your family. You didn't deserve it when you were born. You didn't deserve it before you did anything wrong or anything good. You did not deserve it. And so I want you to see verse, it's the Father setting an identity upon us from eternity past. We're going to get to eternity past here in a few minutes. But here's another way, if we look in verse five, it's almost another way to say the same thing, it's not exactly. In five it says, in love, He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will. Okay, adopted as sons through Jesus Christ. And so it's kind of the same thing that the previous verse is saying,

but it's from a different angle. It's the same thing in that it defines who we are. When you are adopted into a family, you take on that family's last name. You take on their heritage, you take on an inheritance, you take on family responsibility, you take on all those things. When you are adopted into a family, it means a changeover in identity. And so it's the same kind of thing, but it's a different angle because it's talking about family. When it says adopted as sons, okay, the reason it says adopted as sons, it's not because it's sons not daughters, that's not exactly what it's saying. It's saying it's adoption in a legal sense or adoption that includes legal rights as firstborn sons. So in this day and time, if you were the firstborn daughter, sorry about you, but your younger brother would get all the inheritance, okay. The firstborn son would get all the inheritance. Daughters, they just didn't work out for you in

the first century. The reason I'm saying that is because Paul is writing here and he's saying each of you, men and women, he's saying each of you are adopted legally with full inheritance and rights as firstborn sons. So it's not just adopted, it's not like you're not like the fifth kid, or the sixth kid, I got five kids, I shouldn't say that, the sixth kid.

You're not an afterthought, right? You're not like bringing up the rear, like, oh, okay, we got to include them, okay, well, come on, you can come too. That's not how it is, it's adopted as sons in a legal sense. So whenever it's saying that we are adopted to himself as sons, in other words, in and through Jesus Christ, Father God has already chosen you and he has given you a righteousness that Jesus earned for you, and he has given you legal status as his firstborn son. Each of you, this is amazing stuff. You guys are not like, I'm not asking for car wheels in the aisles, but listen, what I told you was really good news this morning. Can I have just a little bit of an amen? Okay, just a little bit, okay, I'm not, listen, I'm not trying to make you crazy, but I'm, you know, I want you to kind of deal with it a little bit.

We've been given all of these things. We have been adopted into the family. The reason, the reason that this is difficult for some of us to hear, this is difficult for you to kind of process a little bit. The reason is because you don't feel, on a given day, you don't feel holy or blameless. You don't feel like adopted firstborn sons. You don't feel like you deserve whatever your inheritance you're gonna get. You feel like an afterthought. You feel like you're on your own living life and you're doing the best you can. You're figuring it out one choice at a time, and you don't feel like there's a big plan. You don't feel like there's some big thing that the Lord God is calling you to. You just feel like, I mean, you're just kind of here. You're just kind of existing, coping, figuring it out. We don't feel set apart. We don't feel like children of the most

high. And let me tell you, this is probably the number one reason why the gospel is so difficult to accept. This is the number one, this is just my experience talking. I have no empirical evidence for this. Both personally and hearing a bunch of other people kind of talk about it. This is why, it's probably the number one reason why the gospel is so difficult to accept.

Now some people, they're gonna, you know, they might say, well, you know, the reason I can't believe the gospel is because I can't believe that people are sinful and they need redemption, right? I can't believe people are that bad. I don't have that view of people, so I can't accept the gospel. That's a cover. They might say, oh, you know, the miracles and the resurrection, it's really hard to believe, you know, I'm a man of science. I can't figure out, you know, I don't know how that works. I can't really, you know, accept that. I can't believe that. It's really hard to get past. That's the front. You might say, well, you know,

we can't really prove the Bible's true, right? We can't really prove that the Bible hadn't been changed. How do we know that what we're reading is the same thing? It's a cover because here's how I know it's a cover, right? All that I just said, all that I just listed has been asked and answered for centuries, centuries. And if you don't believe me, I'll show you stuff from the 1300s. I'll show you stuff that proves the Bible's true. I'll show you stuff. I will give you as many apologetics as I possibly can to illustrate for you that all of that is just junk. It's a front. It's difficult to believe. It's difficult to believe the gospel because the toughest thing for people to get over is that the gospel allows them to hope. It allows them to hope, to believe that things can be better than they are right now. That's the toughest thing for people to believe. Not, you know, they're not looking

at Greek manuscripts from, you know, the Qumran cave. They don't care about that. That's a front. If the Father has set you as holy and blameless before Him, then it removes all excuses from you to take a leap of faith into what the Lord God is calling you to do personally. That's what's tough. Not, I can't believe that miracles actually happen. No, man. No. No. I'm sure that's difficult for you maybe like on a random Wednesday, but like what keeps people from the gospel is that they don't want to live in that kind of hope. They're afraid.

They're going to be disappointed. They're going to be left in a lurch. They're afraid because what the gospel says, and what we just read was, I mean, it's pretty gospel, right? What the gospel says is, man, all that's been given to you, all that's been lavished upon you. You don't have to earn it. You don't have to do anything for it. And even if you kind of mess up, if you're just maybe running from God for a season, the Lord God is calling you and He's saying like, no, no, I want you to come back. I have something for you. I have something for you to do. I have a calling for you. You need to have hope in that. You need to begin to plan on that. You need to begin to align your life with that. Align your dreams with that. I've got amazing plans for you, things that you can't even dream of. I've got all those things happening. And all that's true because God has sent you as holy and blameless before Him,

without you having to earn anything. And He did it from eternity past. Man, what kind of, well, I mean, think about what that unlocks. What kind of hope you kind of walk in at that point. Look, I don't mean name and claim it. I don't mean like, you know, like I'm going to hope that the Lord's going to drop a million dollars on me. Okay. That's not the hope I'm talking about. I mean better stuff than that. I mean, hope to like reconcile with an enemy or a family member that you're estranged from. I mean, hope that a child who is addicted to drugs can be set free. They won't be an addict anymore. I mean, hope that you can confidently fit in a spiritual family like our church and not feel like an outcast. For some of you, that's some real hope. You don't feel that. Feel like an outcast. Feel like you don't belong. What does Scripture say? Scripture says you have been adopted into His family as a

firstborn son. You have every right to be in the Lord's family. He's called you. What are you going to do? You're going to say no to that? You're going to be like, no, no, God, I'll take the low seat over here. I don't want to sit with the family. God's like, I've adopted you. You can, out of a sure identity and salvation in Jesus Christ, you can live out with hope. You can live out your calling and help others begin to grow spiritually. You can do that.

And you might think, wow, Drew, I don't know. You don't know my past. You don't know what I've done. You know, I don't look, I don't. I'm not saying your past doesn't matter. Your past totally matters. It just isn't as heavy as you think it is. It just isn't. Look, mine ain't either. Okay. Like, you know, I got scars. I got stories. I got mistakes. I got big regrets. I mean, I got all those things, right? And so do you. And I don't want to make a lie to any of them. I'm just saying compared to what God has done for you from eternity past, it just doesn't weigh that much. You hear me? It just doesn't matter that much in comparison to all that.

It's like somebody wants to give you a million dollars. And so they just give it to you. And you're like, oh, oh, how can I repay you? And you give them like $5 bet. Okay. Well, keep your five. Okay. Like, just don't take the million. Take the lottery, right? This spiritually, what we just read in Ephesians chapter one, verses three, four, and five, that's the lottery. That's like, that's hitting it in a way that you can never hit it on your own.

That's more than you could ever earn on your own. Your ability to accomplish these things. Your sealing of joyful ministry in your own life is whether or not you can actually hope for those things. Let me say that one more time. I really want you, your ability to accomplish spiritual things, right? To lead people to faith, to share your story, to listen to somebody, to study scripture, to lead somebody to lead a Bible study, right? To do all these things, right? All these things that the Lord has gifted you and called you to do and inspired you to do. All these things, right? To become part of a spiritual family, to take the leap, to trust the person, to try to reconcile. All these things that the Lord has called you to do, right? Your ability to accomplish those things is whether or not you can actually, you have reason to hope for it.

Let me give you a different example. I don't have a reason to play linebacker in the NFL. I have no hope for that, okay? If I'm lining up in a 3-4 and the running back's hitting the hole and it's me, that is going for a touchdown, right? I'm not that guy, okay? I'm not middle-line back at material, okay? And look, don't feel bad for me. It's fine. I'm 47 years old. I've figured this out. However, I have no reason to hope for that. I'm just trying to help you see kind of an absurd idea. I have no reason to hope for that because there's no way that I'm going to play linebacker in the NFL. No team is calling me, do you see? I wasn't recruited out of college to play NFL linebacker, okay? However, however, I am, by stark contrast, I am called, named, chosen before the foundation of the world by the creator, the king of the universe, who says to me, you, Drew, are going to stand before me wholly and blameless. And it's not because I'm a pastor.

It's not because I'm like, I don't do good things. I'm kind of terrible in the morning, okay? Like, I try not to cuss at people whenever they cut me off in traffic, okay? Like, I'm not I'm not some paragon of, of you should be like me. Now, I try to follow Christ and I want you to follow Christ. And so, man, okay. But I will tell you, like, my ability to hope and all those things doesn't come from anything inside of me. My ability to hope for those things comes from on high. And it came from a place that existed before I was born. I just don't even have a counter argument. I can't, I can't do anything about it. It's just true. And, and my ability to, to do any of those things that the Lord has called me, it's tied directly in the hope that I have, whether or not I should hope for those things. And ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, this morning, let me tell you, there is hope. There is hope for you to do

that. It's not too late. Your life isn't too far gone, right? None of you are, are too terrible. There's one more thing I want to kind of ground up. We need to kind of ground our hope, right? Let's look at verse six. It says, in Ephesians 1, 6, it says that all this is done to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In the beloved, the beloved would be Jesus Christ. So all this is done, this is super interesting. This just feels, honestly, if you're just reading this through, this feels just like a tag. This just feels like an extra thing. It's not. It actually gives you the reason why God has done all of this. Because that might actually occur to you. Drew, why would God do that for me? Why would he want to set me holy and blameless before him? Why would he want to adopt me as a firstborn son? Why would he give me all

of that without me asking for what prompted him to do that? And here's our answer in verse six, to the praise of his glorious grace. All of this was so that God's great extravagant grace could be on display in Jesus Christ's work on our behalf. So we saw in verse four where it says, in verse five where it says it's all orchestrated, it's by God's will, right? But here, here we talk about to the praise of his glorious grace. He's given us more than we could ask. So I want you to think about this. This is kind of a thing that's supposed to echo throughout times. Let me just kind of lay it out for you really quick. So God has lavished grace upon us, right? And this act, this act in us, toward us, for us, is supposed to erupt in praise in our lives, right? So as a Christian, as a Christian, you have been given more than you could ever ask for. You have been given all the hope in

the world, all the reason for optimism, all the reason to believe that your life will not be meaningless and lead to nothing. You have been given a cosmic level meaning, a sense of importance, right? Like what you are doing matters in eternity, okay? So what that's supposed to build in us, what that's supposed to do for us is that's supposed to have us erupt in praise, right? And this praise, it happens, and there's never a reason to stop. Because what God did for us, he continues to do for us. So that grace goes on in eternity, right? That grace just keeps going. And what happens to our praise? It keeps going. And we're just getting more things to be excited about. More things are happening us to where we can praise the Lord for it. And it doesn't mean we're flying around on unicorns and rainbows, okay? It doesn't mean we never deal with difficult things. It means, though, that as we deal with

those difficult things, our future is never in jeopardy. You want to meet somebody who's in despair? Talk to somebody who just has no life left. They're just on death row and they're going to die tomorrow. They have literally nothing to live for. That's going to be a shell of a person. Some of you know people like this. They don't practically, like in their mind, like they had nothing to live for, right? It leads to great despair, depression, suicide. It's bad, right? When you have nothing to live for. In Jesus Christ, we have everything to live for. And it's all done to us, and this is kind of a good thing for us. It's all to the praise of His glorious grace. It's not dependent on us at all. So when it says, like, hey, why did God do that? Well, because He wanted to put His grace on display. Oh, okay, so that also had nothing to do with me, okay? So what He's doing to you

is not based on your merit. The reason He did it has nothing to do with you except that you are the beneficiary, except that you are adopted into the family. This gospel of grace echoes throughout time, eternal grace and praise. And I want to end with an illustration. It's going to take me a second to do, but in this illustration, I'm moving the table. You know it's a big one when I move the table. Ephesians 1 helps us deconstruct something that is very prevalent in the American church. Okay, all right, so stay with me. Stay locked in, okay? Let me construct what doesn't need to be constructed. So, like, if I had a sign over me that said, like, this is not the way to do it, or, like, bad, I would, but I'm just going to tell you. Okay, so here's the way that we think about spiritual growth, okay? Here's the way that we think about becoming new, right?

Let me get some props here. Drew Ivey, can you come on up? You're going to be my prop. Daniel Oster, I want you to be a prop, too. You come on up and be a prop. I chose you because you're both so good-looking. You can be my props. Okay, who wants to be God between you? Who's being God? Okay, Daniel's God. Okay, all right, okay. You be a person. Now, I want you to be over here. Okay, you're going to be a person. Okay, Daniel's going to be God. All right, okay, so here's what we think about, right? We think about spiritual maturity this way. We think about spiritual discipline this way. So, spiritual discipline would be like reading your Bible, praying, you know, sharing your faith, giving your testimony, right, whatever. All these different things that we do for the Lord. Okay, all right. Here's how we construct it, okay? Where Daniel is, is like, is holy and blameless. It's blessing. It's all these

things that we just described, but we put it in point A, okay? So, we'll call Daniel point A, so that way you don't have to be God. He's point A, and that's where all the blessing is, right? Yeah, once you step, yeah, you go. Did you elevate? Yeah, right. No, exactly, exactly. That's good. We're really, really digging into the metaphor here. Now, Ivy, over Drew Ivey, over here, is in point B, okay? He is far from God, okay? However we can explain that or whatever. Okay, now, here's how we think about spiritual maturity, okay? Here's how we think about it. So, Drew Ivey, let's just say, in your mind, like, you're saying, okay, I'm gonna pray every day, right? And that's gonna help me become more like, so then you take one step, just one step though, okay? Good. Praying every day. Okay, now, what are you gonna do next? You're gonna start reading your Bible every day,

so take another step, okay? All right, you're getting, are you getting closer? You're getting closer. Now, what are you gonna do next? You're gonna do, you're gonna start discipling people. Yeah, so take another step. All right. Oh, now, what happens, Drew? You had a bad week where you don't disciple anybody, you don't pray, you don't read your Bible. What happens? Oh, yeah, you're three steps back, right? Now, look, anybody been there? Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. Thank you for actual hands. Bless you for that. I see some big nods. I love that. Yeah, this is normal, okay? This is how we consider spiritual growth, okay?

This is not biblical. This is not how Ephesians 1 and many other places in Scripture describe spiritual growth and spiritual disciplines, right? It doesn't say read your Bible so that you can get closer to God. That's what we say, but that's not what Scripture says. Scripture actually paints a different picture, so let me paint that for you. Drew, I would like for you to go stand right next to Daniel. Okay, all right, look at there. Okay, that's Ephesians 1. Nice. Oh, yeah, okay. Man, you guys are really killing it, man. I could not have asked for better props. God bless you. This is Ephesians 1. Drew Ivey is chosen in Christ to be what? What have I been saying? What and what?

Holy and blameless, right? Yeah, holy and blameless. Many other things. I've said many other things, so if you said something different, it's okay. Drew Ivey is holy and blameless because when he when he was called before eternity passed to be with God, God called him and God has made him new, right? God has put him holy and blameless before God. Sorry, Daniel. Before God.

Now, let me ask you, this is all point A. What happens to point B and what happens to spiritual disciplines? If they're not, if spiritual disciplines are not for us to take steps toward God and to take steps backwards whenever we really mess up, okay, or just forget to do whatever we're doing, right? If that's not what it's for, then what is it? What are we experiencing? Okay, I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I need a third person. Oh, third person. Rusty, I got you, buddy. Okay, Rusty, come on up there and stand in point A, please. Stand in point A, all right? All right.

What happens now, what happens now is God the Father is sending the Son to point B. Go ahead and stand in point B, Rusty. Sent to point B, right? Is this sounding familiar right now? Jesus was sent to earth to love people, to minister, to disciple, right? To do all these things, right? Jesus is praying. He's showing us how to do all those things. Rusty, you get to be Jesus. Nice. No, no, you're still there. Oh, okay, no. Oh, you were doing, you were going with it. Okay, no, don't let me, go ahead. No, do that. That's great. Yeah. So he's ministering, okay? He's ministering, Rusty. God bless you. Man, this is turning into a circus. I love it. Okay, I love it. Okay, now,

now, if that's true and Rusty, Jesus, sorry, is made disciples, Drew Ivey's one of those disciples, then where does Drew Ivey go? He goes to B. He goes to B in the power of A. He goes to B not because he's far from God, but because he's sent by God, right? It's not, all of you may sit down. Thank you. Give him a big hand. Okay. Look, it's not that, it's not that God has put us on this earth and is up there in heaven with a big ruler and it's like, you almost made it. You almost made it. You almost made it because what happens is after you do this for a little while, you get sick of it. After you do this for a little while and you're just like, look, I can never, I can never approach this. I can't do, I can't be like whoever, you know, like whatever kind of perfect Christian we have in our mind. I can't take enough steps in a row at the right time in order to get to God. That is not how it works

at all actually. In Ephesians 1, you are with God. You are holy and blameless and you are sent to point B. You are sent in people's lives and so the question that you're asking should not be, how am I doing spiritually? Am I okay? Does God love me? Your question should be, how am I loving the people that are in front of me in point B? How am I loving the people that are in my house? How are loving the people that are at work? How am I showing and sharing God's love with those people? Do you see, do you see how this is different? Do you see it? When you understand that your identity is here, it allows you to go here. It allows you to go here with purpose and you're not always wondering if you're actually saved or not. What the Father has done on your behalf is something that you can be absolutely sure of. Some of you might be here this morning, you're like,

I don't know if I'm a Christian, that's fine. Let's have a conversation. That's really going to be helpful and productive, okay? We can do that but let me just help you. Let me just spoil the ending. You can know if you are in Christ or not. You can know for sure. You can have assurance that you are in point A and the reason I know that is because I've read Ephesians 1, just the first six verses and it's there in black and white and it's going to be there in the next couple of verses that we read and then the next and then the next and then the next because in Ephesians, the message and really the message of most of the New Testament is that Jesus came so that we would be united with him. We trade our junk for his righteousness and in that process that has already happened and then as we go about life and we know, look, I know we're not perfect, that's not what I'm saying, we go imperfectly but we go as sent people.

We're not always checking our spiritual temperature, we are checking to see if we're loving the people around us. This is what it means to have a holy and blameless identity before God. This is the freedom that we can experience. Look, I want to encourage you, if that just kind of broke your thinking or if you need to kind of, you know, talk with somebody, look, we linger after here, we talk, we, you know, so if it's your first time here, really glad you're here, we're not going to all like rush out the door, we're just going to kind of hang out. It's cool if you got somewhere to go but we just want to hang out. We're going to have Super Bowl parties tonight, oh we're going to, sorry Daniel, I spoiled it. We're going to have Super Bowl parties tonight that Daniel's going to tell you more about and look, it's just a chance to hang out, talk, work through some of

this, right? It is hard to detox from thinking that you're not close enough to God all the time. That's a hard thing to detox from but God is telling you, I've done all these things in you and I want you to be about my work and look, as a church, that's what we're here for. We're encouraging you toward that. We're encouraging toward other people, toward loving people. And it doesn't mean you don't ever have problems, you don't ever have things to get a workout, you do and we handle that, we love each other through that, right? We walk people, we walk each other through that. But when we go through a low, when we go through a frustrating point, we're not despairing that we're not really Christians every time. Does that make sense? What a freeing thing that is, right? Could you imagine if every time you messed up as a child, that your parents threatened to disown you? Maybe some of you did and you're in therapy right now

for it, okay? But that's not normal, okay? That's not good parenting by any stretch of the imagination, okay? And that's not what God does. God says you're mine. Let's rest in that. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for adopting us as firstborn sons with complete legal rights to an inheritance that we're, I mean, we hadn't even gone to the inheritance. Lord, just so much grace and just a tidal wave of goodness toward us, of care and help. Lord, thank you for for doing all that in us, to us, definitely whenever we did not deserve it. And you did it all

so that we'd praise you. What a reason to sing. Lord, help us just to praise you for your goodness, praise you for it. Let's turn into a prayer. Amen.