SPEAKER_00: We began a new sermon series last Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: Arise, a life of stewardship.
SPEAKER_00: We are in a new season at Alexander Presbyterian Church.
SPEAKER_00: We are embarking on a new church building, which is quite the challenge.
SPEAKER_00: After all these years, we have been leasing and renting, and God, lo and behold, four years ago gave us a property at a great discount, a great blessing, a great gift, one mile from here.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord willing, three years from now, we'll be moving in there and we'll be worshiping there.
SPEAKER_00: And we are asking God to stir the hearts of each and every person in this church to arise, to get up in a new way spiritually, that we might offer ourselves wholly to the Lord in this adventure.
SPEAKER_00: And we're looking at the concept of spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we looked at a risen Savior because without a risen Savior, there are no risen people.
SPEAKER_00: Without a risen Savior, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, we're still in our sins.
SPEAKER_00: Our faith is futile.
SPEAKER_00: We're wasting our time here, if that were true.
SPEAKER_00: But because Jesus is alive, as we saw last week, what did he say in his parting words to the disciples as he gave them the great commission?
SPEAKER_00: Lo, I am with you always.
SPEAKER_00: Wherever you go, as you go in Christ, you go with his presence.
SPEAKER_00: And we considered last week what that looks like, what that means, that he goes with us, his presence.
SPEAKER_00: And because he offers us his presence, we we take off our ornaments.
SPEAKER_00: I've had so many good conversations with so many of you this past week.
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to take off my ornaments?
SPEAKER_00: Well, whatever's weighing us down, whatever's blocking and obscuring our communion with God, blocking our understanding of his presence.
SPEAKER_00: But because there's a risen Savior, we can do this.
SPEAKER_00: And because there's a risen Savior, there are risen people.
SPEAKER_00: And there are many risen people in this sanctuary this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus Christ was raised to life, he offers spiritual life to spiritually dead people.
SPEAKER_00: That's what this sermon is about this morning from the book of Ephesians.
SPEAKER_00: It's a great text that many of you are familiar with.
SPEAKER_00: It's my privilege to read this text again.
SPEAKER_00: This one just never gets old, does it?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to be in Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: And you were dead in the 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 the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: By grace you have been saved and raised up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: For by grace you have been saved through faith.
SPEAKER_00: And this is not your own doing.
SPEAKER_00: It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
SPEAKER_00: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
SPEAKER_00: This is the reading of God's majestic and authoritative word.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray to him.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you for the light that we have in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Because your spirit has worked in us, we are spiritually alive this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And we rejoice in the gift of life.
SPEAKER_00: And Father, we pray for a new and growing understanding of the fullness of the life that we have in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So teach us, Spirit of God, even now we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: This morning we're going to look that only the power of God can raise dead people.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, only the love of God desires to raise dead people.
SPEAKER_00: And thirdly, only the grace of God can change the life of people that were once dead.
SPEAKER_00: Only the power of God raises dead people.
SPEAKER_00: Dead people?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Paul said it.
SPEAKER_00: Writing to the church at Ephesus, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.
SPEAKER_00: Walking in the Bible was a metaphor for a way of life, a journey, where you are in your journey.
SPEAKER_00: And what Paul says, the Bible teaches that every single man, woman, child that's ever been born into this world was born spiritually dead.
SPEAKER_00: Following the course of this world, he says, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: That Greek word, work, is the same word that Paul uses in the first chapter of Ephesians.
SPEAKER_00: That's a word that we're familiar with where he talks about the power of God and how the work and the power of God raises from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: That same power is that at work in you that raised Jesus from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: That's the same Greek word that Paul uses in chapter two here.
SPEAKER_00: And you say, well, so what?
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's the so what?
SPEAKER_00: The same, this power, not God's power, don't mishear me.
SPEAKER_00: It's not God's power, but Satan has great power also.
SPEAKER_00: Not as much as God's power, but Paul uses that word, energy.
SPEAKER_00: It's a verb.
SPEAKER_00: The energy.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you're not dead simply by yourself, spiritually, when you're born into this world.
SPEAKER_00: Did we fall in Adam?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says yes, we did.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible teaches the doctrine of original sin.
SPEAKER_00: But there is a power from the prince of this world, the devil, that was also actively engaged in the work of our deadness.
SPEAKER_00: Frankly, that's a little scary.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't be frightened by it.
SPEAKER_00: No, we shouldn't live in fear, but we ought to be aware that the power, that the devil has power.
SPEAKER_00: Don't take him lightly.
SPEAKER_00: You were dead in trespasses and sins.
SPEAKER_00: That word trespass means to slip, to fall, to stumble, to go in the wrong direction.
SPEAKER_00: That word sin, to miss the mark, to miss the target.
SPEAKER_00: Having been born spiritually dead, we have greatly missed the target and the mark of what God has called us to be and how God has called us to live until such time as Jesus saves us.
SPEAKER_00: The word dead, is that an overstatement?
SPEAKER_00: You probably like me know a lot of people who don't consider themselves Christians who are breathing today, just as much as we are, who are good thinkers, who do a lot of good deeds.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna be candid.
SPEAKER_00: I know some non-Christians that I think live better than some Christians.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to tell.
SPEAKER_00: Some non-Christians in this world, they just seem to be more generous, they just seem to be more kind, they seem to be more patient.
SPEAKER_00: Don't just roll right past that with this very erroneous assumption.
SPEAKER_00: Well, because we're Christians, we've got it all together.
SPEAKER_00: Non-Christians don't really have anything to offer.
SPEAKER_00: That's not true.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for my non-Christian friends.
SPEAKER_00: I do.
SPEAKER_00: But I recognize, so in what sense is Paul saying that they are dead?
SPEAKER_00: And it's possible that you're hearing me this morning and you're dead spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: It's very possible.
SPEAKER_00: Dead, as the Bible defines it, is dead to the power of God in us, dead to the power of God to bring about spiritual life in us.
SPEAKER_00: Theologians define a good work of God as doing the right thing for the right reason unto the right end.
SPEAKER_00: We need God to do that.
SPEAKER_00: To do the right thing for the right reason to please God, unto the right end to bring God glory.
SPEAKER_00: Well, obviously, you can't do that if you're not a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Dead to the power of God.
SPEAKER_00: And then Paul says, Among whom we all once lived.
SPEAKER_00: There's nobody outside of that we all.
SPEAKER_00: That we all covers all of us.
SPEAKER_00: We all once lived in the passions of our flesh.
SPEAKER_00: That Greek word passion is a compound word, epi thumia.
SPEAKER_00: Thumos is desires.
SPEAKER_00: That little prefix epi, that preposition, over.
SPEAKER_00: Think about it like this: over the top.
SPEAKER_00: Sin, this is one way to look at sin.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is taking a good desire that God gave us work, sex, eating, all these good desires that God created us with, these worldly passions are when we turbocharge them.
SPEAKER_00: When we're trying to find a way, we're trying to make a life outside of God.
SPEAKER_00: To take good desires and things and ratchet them up, trying to make a life outside of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's really what that word means.
SPEAKER_00: To take the good and turn it into evil, and the reason it's turning it into evil is because we're trying to get something that God, we're trying to get something other than from God.
SPEAKER_00: Think of it as stolen goods.
SPEAKER_00: God created us in his image.
SPEAKER_00: These worldly passions are when we take the good things that God has given us and we use them to live without him.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul's saying here.
SPEAKER_00: If we were created by God, for God, yet we're trying to make a life apart from God, that's a problem.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we sang earlier in this worship service the word rebels.
SPEAKER_00: All of us were born into this world as rebels.
SPEAKER_00: And when you come to Christ, you lay down your arms.
SPEAKER_00: Rebels.
SPEAKER_00: Are you working very hard trying to find peace in this world, trying to find meaning for your existence?
SPEAKER_00: Are you looking for some kind of forgiveness outside of Christ?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that we cannot work up spiritual life from within us.
SPEAKER_00: If we find it, we must look outside of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Spiritual life can't come from that which is dead.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul is saying very clearly in this text.
SPEAKER_00: And yet there are many people in this world that fundamentally disagree with everything I've just said.
SPEAKER_00: You know that.
SPEAKER_00: There are many people in our city that would say, no, that's not accurate.
SPEAKER_00: Read a story about a woman's Bible study.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know where it happened, but after the Bible study, looking at this passage, one of the women said, Well, I don't think I've ever been dead to sin, but I have on occasion kind of felt faint once in a while.
SPEAKER_00: That's the thinking of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Well, sometimes I have a bad day, or sometimes I have a bad thought, and I need a little moral inspiration.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what the Bible teaches.
SPEAKER_00: The great Saint Augustine said, My sin was all the more incurable because I did not think of myself as a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: The teaching of the Bible is so clear.
SPEAKER_00: Spiritually dead people cannot do anything in and of themselves to find spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: The great preacher George Whitfield used an illustration that from my reading, every Bible commentator has borrowed from.
SPEAKER_00: It's the illustration that Whitfield used about Lazarus.
SPEAKER_00: For those of you that haven't heard the story, one day Jesus went to the tomb of his very good friend Lazarus, who had been dead for four days.
SPEAKER_00: And he stood outside Lazarus' tomb, surrounded by a lot of people.
SPEAKER_00: There was certainly a public witness there.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus cried out, Lazarus, come out.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what happened?
SPEAKER_00: A man who had been dead, physically dead for four days, rose up and came out.
SPEAKER_00: It really happened.
SPEAKER_00: There were many witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: Whitfield said, no one would have approached Lazarus when he was dead, saying, Lazarus, you need to get up because Jesus is here to help you.
SPEAKER_00: He's a great Savior.
SPEAKER_00: All you need to do, Lazarus, is to reach out to him and he will save you.
SPEAKER_00: Lazarus, please just get up, take the first step, and Jesus will do the rest.
SPEAKER_00: That never happened, right?
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Dead people don't do anything.
SPEAKER_00: The preaching of the Bible is that unless Jesus raises you from the dead, you will not rise up.
SPEAKER_00: You never take the first step.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody in heaven is going to say, Well, I'm so glad I took the first step.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad that when I was dead, I was able to rise up myself.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody will say that.
SPEAKER_00: You know what we will all say?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, I was dead in my sin.
SPEAKER_00: And because you were rich in mercy, I didn't get up by myself because you came down and you came in, and you breathed new life into me, and you gave me the gift of faith to believe.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, all glory goes to you.
SPEAKER_00: No, dead people don't reach out for anything.
SPEAKER_00: Spiritual life requires when somebody else reaches down from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Lazarus came alive because Jesus gave him spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4, look at verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Those two words.
SPEAKER_00: I've heard more than one preacher, commentator say these may be the two most important words of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: But God, while we were dead, God took action.
SPEAKER_00: But God being rich in mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, all of the action is his.
SPEAKER_00: None of it is ours.
SPEAKER_00: He made us alive together with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: By grace you have been saved.
SPEAKER_00: He raised us up with him.
SPEAKER_00: He seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There's this beautiful phrase in this text.
SPEAKER_00: Together with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's a compound word, the prefix with.
SPEAKER_00: When the Bible talks about how you came alive in Christ, we talk about that as union with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's the doctrine.
SPEAKER_00: And what that doctrine means, as we read in Romans and really read here again, is that when you become a Christian, at the moment you believe, and Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2, do you have to believe?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: You're not merely a puppet.
SPEAKER_00: You must respond.
SPEAKER_00: You must believe.
SPEAKER_00: But what he says here is even the faith with which you believe is what?
SPEAKER_00: A gift from God.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, yes.
SPEAKER_00: That moment that you believe this gospel, the moment you believe with the faith that God gave you, immediately, positionally, God says, okay, you were crucified with Christ when he was on that cross.
SPEAKER_00: And you say, Well, I don't remember that.
SPEAKER_00: That's because physically you weren't there.
SPEAKER_00: But in your union with Christ, you were there.
SPEAKER_00: When he was raised from the dead, you were raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: With him.
SPEAKER_00: When he was seated in the heavenlies at the right hand of God, did you catch what he said?
SPEAKER_00: He raised us up, that's past tense, verse six.
SPEAKER_00: He raised us up with him and seated us, past tense, with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Where is Tom Holliday right now?
SPEAKER_00: Well, he's behind his pulpit.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: In my body.
SPEAKER_00: But where is Tom Holiday in his spirit right now?
SPEAKER_00: In heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And so are you, Christian.
SPEAKER_00: This is amazing truth.
SPEAKER_00: Let it sink in by the work of God.
unknown: R.
SPEAKER_00: C.
SPEAKER_00: Sproul said, when it comes to this work of regeneration, regeneration is the word that just means to come alive, to be recreated.
SPEAKER_00: God created us the first time when we were born, but there's a second birth that he wants you to experience.
SPEAKER_00: Sproul said, in order for someone who is dead to the things of God to come alive to God, something must be done to him and something must be done for him.
SPEAKER_00: Again, dead people do not come alive themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Martin Lloyd Jones said those two words, but God, those words in and of themselves contain the whole of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Really?
SPEAKER_00: But God?
SPEAKER_00: I think he's right.
SPEAKER_00: God made us alive together with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: By grace you have been saved and raised up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places.
SPEAKER_00: You know, when we preached through Ephesians just a couple of years ago, some of you remember this.
SPEAKER_00: How many times in the book of Ephesians does God tell us that we've been seated in the heavenly places?
SPEAKER_00: Five times.
SPEAKER_00: Paul really wants us to get this in our heads.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to get this in his in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: You are not somebody who's really on earth looking up, wondering if somebody's there.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a Christian, you are there.
SPEAKER_00: Your spirit is there with Christ, seated in the heavenly places, and you're looking down where your body and I yeah, is it mystical?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_00: But it's true.
SPEAKER_00: And as we said a couple years ago through the series of Ephesians, you can live your Christian life believing that you're really on earth in your spirit, and you're not really seated with Christ in the heavenlies, and many Christians do.
SPEAKER_00: Or you can believe what the Bible says and see yourself seated in the heavenlies with Christ by faith.
SPEAKER_00: And when you look down on earth and when you live your life day by day, that will make all the difference in the world if you believe that.
SPEAKER_00: It's changed my life.
SPEAKER_00: When you come to Christ by faith, God raises you up spiritually by the same power he raised up his own son, crucified with Jesus, resurrected with Jesus, positionally, yes.
SPEAKER_00: But positionally means something.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul takes these three verbs and attaches these the prefix with, together with.
SPEAKER_00: So where did God's wrath go?
SPEAKER_00: Did it just vanish into thin air?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus took it.
SPEAKER_00: I like the way Charles Purgeon said it.
SPEAKER_00: You stand before God as if you were Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Because Christ stood before God as if he were you.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
SPEAKER_00: You stand before God as if you were Christ, clothed with all of his perfection and all of his righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Because Christ stood before God as if he were you.
SPEAKER_00: When Christ stood before God as if he were Tom Holliday, all God saw was Tom Holiday's sin that just covered his son Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And God poured out all the wrath he had for Tom Holliday because of Tom Holiday's sin.
SPEAKER_00: Because Tom Holliday was a rebel.
SPEAKER_00: He poured out all of his wrath, not on me, but on Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know he will do that for you?
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we call it the good news.
SPEAKER_00: He will do that for you.
SPEAKER_00: If you come to him and you confess your sin, you confess that you're a rebel, lay down your arms and look to what Christ has done for his people.
SPEAKER_00: Only the power of God can raise dead people, but secondly, only the love of God desires to raise dead people.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead.
SPEAKER_00: God's power is unleashed in us as his people because of his great love for us.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that what the first chapter of Ephesians is all about before the foundations of the world?
SPEAKER_00: Because before there was one blade of grass on this ground, before there was one cloud in the sky, before God created this world, before he created you, long before he created you, he thought about you.
SPEAKER_00: Christian.
SPEAKER_00: I like the way Sinclair Ferguson, the theologian, puts it.
SPEAKER_00: But there was no inner Trinitarian blackmail going on here.
SPEAKER_00: Some people think that.
SPEAKER_00: He knew what a mess you were.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, Father, you really have to love them because look at what I did on the cross for them.
SPEAKER_00: That's not true.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Ferguson means.
SPEAKER_00: There was no inner Trinitarian blackmail coming on in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody had to make the Father love you.
SPEAKER_00: The Father has always loved you in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Was his love grounded in the work of Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: But he has always loved you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus didn't have to persuade the Father to love us.
SPEAKER_00: While we were enemies, Jesus, the Father loved us.
SPEAKER_00: How long have you been living with?
SPEAKER_00: How long have you been living for somebody else's love?
SPEAKER_00: I would say most of us would probably say something like this.
SPEAKER_00: If you've got one person in this life who really loves you deeply, who loves you at your worst.
SPEAKER_00: Not that they ever, ever see you at your worst, but when they see you what seems like at your worst, do you have somebody like that in your life?
SPEAKER_00: You're very, very fortunate if you have a handful of people like that.
SPEAKER_00: But nobody who knows you who loves you.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody loves you like your father.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we call it good news.
SPEAKER_00: Lastly, only the grace of God can change your life.
SPEAKER_00: Three times in this text the word grace is used, undeserved favor.
SPEAKER_00: By grace you have been saved through faith.
SPEAKER_00: Faith is not the ground of your salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Faith is not the cause of your salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Grace is but the instrument.
SPEAKER_00: It's the instrument that God used.
SPEAKER_00: By grace, you've been saved.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation, even faith is God's gift to us.
SPEAKER_00: It's not our gift to God.
SPEAKER_00: It's not our work for God.
SPEAKER_00: We are not saved.
SPEAKER_00: Someone once said, we are not saved by our right actions, and that is very true.
SPEAKER_00: But I fear that a lot of people in the Reformed theology, hyper-Calvinists or whatever you want to call them, I fear that a lot of those folks don't understand that you're not only saved, not you're not saved by your right actions, but you're not also saved by your right thinking.
SPEAKER_00: You're not saved by your right theology.
SPEAKER_00: You're saved by grace.
SPEAKER_00: We were too dead to be the source of our salvation, and we are too weak to maintain our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we have the Holy Spirit working in us.
SPEAKER_00: You know, as we close, it's interesting to me that it starts out, this passage ends with really the same metaphor that Paul used to begin.
SPEAKER_00: As for you, you used to walk in your sin.
SPEAKER_00: Did you see how he closes this text?
SPEAKER_00: As he says, what?
SPEAKER_00: For we are his workmanship, and you know, we I preach on this text a lot.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you know what that means.
SPEAKER_00: We are his masterpiece.
SPEAKER_00: We are his work of art.
SPEAKER_00: Created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: Look at it.
SPEAKER_00: That we should what?
SPEAKER_00: Walk in those good works.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's a coincidence here in Paul.
SPEAKER_00: Christian, only the grace of God can change your life.
SPEAKER_00: But the grace of God absolutely can change your life.
SPEAKER_00: Let's get on with it.
SPEAKER_00: Let's stop wasting our time.
SPEAKER_00: Living for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Let's stop wasting our days and our gifts.
SPEAKER_00: Focus on us.
SPEAKER_00: God made you, God saved you, and God is working in you every day to set you free, to set me free in new ways, so that I and you will live a life that demonstrates the power of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's available.
SPEAKER_00: He's offering it to you.
SPEAKER_00: He's offering it to me.
SPEAKER_00: Seated us with him in the heavenly places, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us.
SPEAKER_00: That word, right?
SPEAKER_00: Immeasurable.
SPEAKER_00: I'm never going to get over it when God calls me to glory, and neither are you, Christian.
SPEAKER_00: There will never be the time in eternity where we will have tapped it all out.
SPEAKER_00: Immeasurable.
SPEAKER_00: There's always more of the heart and the love and the wisdom and the power of God to be experienced.
SPEAKER_00: Don't ever get over your salvation.
SPEAKER_00: So I love my Wednesday mornings, I love my Friday mornings and my Friday afternoons when I get them, and I love my Saturdays.
SPEAKER_00: You know why?
SPEAKER_00: I'm studying and preparing.
SPEAKER_00: Some of my favorite times of the week.
SPEAKER_00: I'm studying this text Wednesday morning.
SPEAKER_00: And honest to God, I just started tearing up.
SPEAKER_00: And I the Holy Spirit just convinced me.
SPEAKER_00: Tom, you cannot have a bad day today.
SPEAKER_00: If this is true, you cannot have a bad day today.
SPEAKER_00: You have bad days?
SPEAKER_00: You have hard days?
SPEAKER_00: Come back to this text.
SPEAKER_00: Oh my.
SPEAKER_00: We are rich in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We are a risen people because of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And I I have to close by, I this is my duty as a preacher of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Are you still dead spiritually?
SPEAKER_00: I am not asking you how much you've been to church.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know?
SPEAKER_00: What we've talked about this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Have you experienced in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Have you confessed your sins to God?
SPEAKER_00: Can you admit that you are a rebel?
SPEAKER_00: Or does that just seem to be beneath you?
SPEAKER_00: Brad, don't you dare leave here without making peace with God.
SPEAKER_00: You look at the promises of what God is offering you, and you recognize that you are dead in your sin.
SPEAKER_00: But you invite the one who can reach down and give you new life.
SPEAKER_00: And you ask him to give you new life.
SPEAKER_00: And you ask him to give you the faith to believe this.
SPEAKER_00: And he'll change your life.
SPEAKER_00: He will change your life.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we we do thank you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we thank you that you have done for us everything that we could not do for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Father, for loving us from before you created this world.
SPEAKER_00: And thank you, Holy Spirit, for bringing that spiritual dynamite into our lives and blowing up everything that needs to be blown up so that we can have eyes to see and ears to hear the good news.
SPEAKER_00: So, Father, this day I thank you for all the people who have risen in Christ who are worshiping you.
SPEAKER_00: And this day I thank you for the people who are going to come to life this day.
SPEAKER_00: Because they're going to believe for the first time that these promises are not too good to be true.
SPEAKER_00: And they're going to, by faith, receive what your spirit can do.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Also, today I want to talk just a bit more about the Arise campaign.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you all received a packet.
SPEAKER_00: If you were here last Sunday on your way out.
SPEAKER_00: If not, there are some ushers in the back with packets.
SPEAKER_00: If you have not received one, please take one and take it home and read it and think about it and pray over it.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to have Commitment Sunday, April the 7th.
SPEAKER_00: April the 7th, we're going to all bring our commitment, our pledge of what God enabling us we will give to the building fund for the next three years.
SPEAKER_00: You can read about that again in your packet of information.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me.
SPEAKER_00: Also, April the 28th will be First Fruit Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to ask our folks to bring what they can of their three-year commitment.
SPEAKER_00: Bring what you can.
SPEAKER_00: That Sunday in particular.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm going to share briefly how Sharon and I have approached this with a lot of fear.
SPEAKER_00: Truthfully.
SPEAKER_00: But we have been sitting down and talking with each other for the last month, I don't know, six months.
SPEAKER_00: We've had a lot of good conversations about it because, you know, a lot of us knew this was coming, right?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we knew.
SPEAKER_00: We've had a lot of good conversations.
SPEAKER_00: If you're married, talk to each other.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of married people don't seem to talk about money.
SPEAKER_00: I've noticed as a pastor over the years.
SPEAKER_00: Talk to each other.
SPEAKER_00: Sit down and say, well, what do you think?
SPEAKER_00: Live by faith.
SPEAKER_00: So Cher and I have talked about it a lot.
SPEAKER_00: And we've looked at our budget a zillion times.
SPEAKER_00: Where could we cut back for a greater cause?
SPEAKER_00: We finally sat down, and she, this is the way she wanted to do it.
SPEAKER_00: You write out write down your number, Tom, and I'll write down my number.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: For us, it's going to be by far the biggest financial investment we've ever made, above and beyond our tithe.
SPEAKER_00: Her number was my number, my number was her number.
SPEAKER_00: We both just kind of got teary-eyed.
SPEAKER_00: Because we both had gone to God and invited them into this conversation.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a single person, my advice would be to at least talk about it with somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: You don't necessarily tell them your number, but at least say have a conversation.
SPEAKER_00: Let's not be so private with our money.
SPEAKER_00: Let's ask God to free us and open us.
SPEAKER_00: Let's ask God to give us faith to trust him for the journey.
SPEAKER_00: And it'll be a good experience.
SPEAKER_00: It'll be part of our gospel transformation.
SPEAKER_00: This building fund is not about a building ultimately.
SPEAKER_00: You know that.
SPEAKER_00: This is about what God wants to do in the hearts of his people.
SPEAKER_00: As we take off our ornaments, as we trust him, as we look to him and see what he will do.
SPEAKER_00: It's a privilege to be on this journey with you.
SPEAKER_00: We all need to be on the journey.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look to God and see what his hand provides.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your attention.
SPEAKER_00: Uh see you downstairs for.