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So how's everybody today? Wonderful. We're just blessed to be inside the air conditioning, aren't we? You better believe it. It is hot out there, but that's the way it goes. It's bad when it's too hot to fish and too hot to play golf. That's just a bad day, right? You might as well just come to church and eat, right? There you go. Hey, let's pray. Lord, thank you for today. Thank you that we can get out out of the heat. Thank you for a chance of fellowship, uh, all the men together, and just what a blessing it is. And I pray you'll, as you have fed us uh physically, I pray you'll feed us spiritually from your word. We thank you for those who prepared lunch for us, and we ask your blessings on them, and uh, we ask your blessings on the meal we've had, and now we uh appreciate most of all the greatest blessing that comes through Jesus as our Savior. In His name we pray, and everybody said.

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Amen.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

So I want to do a little bit of a follow-up to our Sunday message, and I know for you guys that are members at other sister churches, it's we love y'all, we're glad you're here, so you're gonna get a little bit of that. Um, Sundays are tough on a preacher uh because there's always too much left on the bone. There's always too much meat left on the bone. I love old school preacher jokes. I mean, I really love those. I I wish we didn't lose those in our culture. And there's one of them that I love that kind of goes like this uh a young preacher, first church, he's preaching in a farming community as the story goes. And uh there they get into the winter time and just the snow unloads. I mean, it's just deep and all of that. And he tells his wife, listen, I, you know, we're gonna go in case anybody comes, we're gonna be there. So he gets there, and a few minutes late, a family comes in, and they're the only family that can make it to church in the snow. And so they come in and they sit down and he's kind of awkward and he's new, and he says, Well, you know, it's just your family. Yeah, how do you want to do this today? And he said, Well, preacher, all I know to tell you is uh, you know, we put the hay out in the barn, and if only one cow shows up, we feed that cow. And so we're here. And so he goes, Okay. And so in his mind, he's thinking, you know, boy, they work this hard at church. I'm gonna really give them my best. And so he preaches and he preaches and he preaches and he preaches and all, and he gets finished. You know, he comes over and he talks to them a minute, and he says, Well, uh, what did y'all think about church today? And the farmer says, Well, I told you that uh, you know, if only one cow comes, we'd still feed that one cow, but we wouldn't try to feed that one cow the entire barn. And so sometimes as preachers, we try to feed you all the entire barn worth of hay, and sometimes you just can't get it all. So, but for a few minutes I want to give you a thought that's kind of the back part of the message on Sunday. Uh, and so here's what we talked about on Sunday, Jeremiah 33.3, which is one of those great promises in scripture that we that we see. But the last part of that I want you to I want you to get a hold of with me. And so if you'll just walk real fast with me, I think we can get there quick. So Jeremiah 33.3 says this here's the promise. Call to me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things, or great and unsearchable things, or great and incomprehensible things you do not know. And so uh Jeremiah in a nutshell is uh been put in prison for preaching judgment on the children of Israel. The city of Jerusalem is in siege by the Babylonians, and they've put him in jail because they got tired of hearing him preach the message of repent. And so he is there in prison, and the Bible says that God speaks to him repeatedly there. And here he comes to him and he says, Listen, I know you're in this spot, but I am the creator God of the universe, and I accomplished all things, and Yahweh is my name. And Jeremiah, if you'll call to me, I will answer you and I will show you these great and incomprehensible, unsearchable things. I will open up the windows of heaven and show you how you have placed your faith in the right place, right? So that's kind of that message on Sunday. And here was that deal. He desires to communicate with us, he opens the doors for us and he invites us to talk to him. The statement to Jeremiah was, call on me. He's inviting Jeremiah to communicate with him, and he'll communicate in return. Our relationship, we're reminded, is with Almighty God. Call to me and I will show you great and unsearchable or incomprehensible things. When we are in relationship with the Creator God of the universe, he is so far beyond anything we can understand or grow into whatever. And so when we're in relationship with our Heavenly Father, we are in relationship with Almighty God. We are in relationship with him through Jesus, who is the King of kings and the Lord of Lords. And that matters. When you talk to me, you get this much. But when you talk to Jesus, you get this much. And it matters who we're in relationship with. And then finally, we should seek him. That should have an impact on us. That should affect us in our relationship with the Lord. He opens the windows of heaven, he allows us to communicate with him. We are communicating with the creator God of the universe. If the creator God of the universe is going to communicate back to you, what are you going to get? You are going to get this magnitude of incomprehensible God-sized work and truth and love and all of that that he is going to pour into our lives. And so when we come to relationship with him, we ought to have an expectation based on our faith of who God is of a God-sized impact of him being involved in our life. Now we used this scripture to illustrate that from the New Testament, and that's kind of what I want you to think about this morning. Here's what Paul says to the church at Ephesus, and he says this in multiple of his letters. So this is a common theme that illustrates exactly the moment that we see unpacked in the life of Jeremiah. And so Paul is telling the church at Ephesus, like I'm your pastor, I planted you, and here's what I pray for you. And I told the church and for you guys, especially this morning, I pray this for our church. This is a pastoral prayer, and here's what I want them to see. Paul says, For this reason I kneel before the Father, and then he reminds us who we're in relationship with, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. I pray that he, that heavenly Father, may grant you the church, and listen to how he grants, according to the riches of his glory. When God offers to speak Jeremiah, he says, I'm going to show you great and incomprehensible or unsearchable things. Paul says, I'm praying that when you meet with the Lord, he will grant you that same magnitude of who he is in your life, to be strengthened with power in the inner man through his spirit. And so the power that comes is the power that comes through the Holy Spirit of God that is revealed according to the riches of his glory. Are you getting this picture? Like when you talk to Jesus, something dramatic ought to be happening, and we ought to have the kind of faith where we come to him that we expect. Not that we're presuming on God, but we're recognizing this is the creator God of the universe that I'm talking to. This is not going to be like ordering in the drive-thru. I mean, this is God that we're speaking and communicating with, that he is involving in our lives and he has invited us to communicate with. And so Paul is saying, I want you all to get that. And then he says, and that the Messiah, and he comes back to make us understand Jesus, makes all these things work, that the Messiah, and he gives that title because he wants us to be reminded, this is the King of kings and the Lord of Lords who thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but humbled himself, took on the form of a man, and became obedient even to the point of death on the cross. That's the Messiah. He died for us and conquered death and sin, that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. And let me ask you, if the creator God of the universe, who is the Messiah who conquered death and sin, dwells in our hearts through faith, what should that create of an expectation in us for what it means to have Jesus in our lives? That makes sense like an incredible prayer right here, isn't it? And he says, being rooted and firmly and established in love, that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints, and this is a prayer for every Christian, all the saints, what is the length and width and height and depth of God's love, and to know the Messiah's love that surpasses knowledge. In other words, there is so much more than God that God loves us that we have yet discovered. It's beyond us to even get our mind and our arms wrapped around that truth. When he tells Jeremiah, call to me and I will show you great and unsearchable or incomprehensible things, Paul is saying the same thing. He says, I'm praying that somehow you can get your feeble minds around how much God loves you, even though it's beyond you to even understand that. Does that make sense? That's incredible, isn't it? And then he says this, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. So that description of what God is revealing into us culminates in what Paul says, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. So you are now, he is asking the Lord to fill each of us with the fullness of all of that. Now here's what he says. Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, that creator God power is so far beyond what we can imagine, but he says, it works in us. The point of his prayer was that we're filled with the fullness of all that. And then he says, To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus. And where is Christ Jesus? He has just prayed all of this that we would be filled with the Messiah's love. And so how does that work? That in the church, his glory is fulfilled in the church and in Christ Jesus, in us to generations forever and ever. Amen. We should so radically alter our picture of what it means to be a child of God that it is incomprehensible to us, and we spend a lifetime pursuing the magnitude of what happened to us when we got saved. Like we will never get to the boundaries of the power that God brings into our lives when we give our life to Him. Right? So now I want to give you just a couple of thoughts to like sort of mess you up here. We should expect these superlatives. We should expect those in our lives. That's that last point that was in the message on Sunday. When we come to the Lord, it should, we should come expecting God to do something God-sized. We shouldn't come and ask the Lord when we come on Sundays to bless our service or to be present. We ought to come asking the creator God of the universe, who has the fullness of the Messiah, to explode in our midst and bring revival empowered by the Holy Spirit. That's what our prayer should be for church. Paul is praying for us to understand that. Like that's what he wants the church and expects us to understand so that we come to this and we begin to expect, God, I know I have no idea how much you love us, but please expand the boundaries of my understanding to help me know more about how much you love me. God, I know that the word says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and then he said, said, let there be light, and he said, let there be water, and he said, let there be plant. I cannot possibly, when I go out into the universe, I go out into the driving around, seeing plants, animals, whatever it is. I go to a doctor's visit and they're explaining to me stuff that I don't understand. I see the magnitude of your creation. I literally cannot wrap my mind around you said a word, and all this was put in place. God, your power and might is so beyond what I can get my mind around. But Lord, our community desperately needs Jesus, and so I need you to help expand my understanding of your power so I can pray like I'm supposed to pray for God to do something. Does that make sense? Now, this is not Greg making this up. Y'all read the words in Scripture, right? And you think about all the superlatives that go on in this passage of Scripture when you look at your sheet here. Every family in heaven and on earth, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power through his spirit. Uh, he says, we may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width and height and depth of God's love. It surpasses knowledge. You'll be filled with the fullness of God. To him is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think. These superlatives, this is who God is. And our lack of faith is not recognizing who God is and how that is supposed to transfer into us. Does that make sense? I mean, we we should come to God expecting God-sized things, not because we deserve it, not because it's something we're doing, but because our faith is in this person of God that's in Scripture. It's about Him, what He's doing and who He is. And we should understand that that's what this process looks like. It is personally, He talks about all the saints in the church and all of that, but then it is also in the church as a whole. Because what is the church? It's just each of us together. And so when I'm talking to staff, like we're trying to look for staff people, and when I talk to new staff uh interviews, I'm interviewing a guy for the first time this afternoon, first time I'll meet him, talk to him, and they ask me, like, how what's your thing with the staff and what do they do, and how do you command them and supervise them and all this business? And what I always tell them is this here's what I need to happen. I'm not a micromanager. If I had to micromanage you, what I need you for, right? I do it myself, it's faster to do it myself. That's not the point. When we get you here, I want you to flourish spiritually because when you're flourishing, ministry flourishes. And then I will tell them in the people that serve in your area, I need you to understand that, and I need you to invest in them because when they flourish, ministry flourishes. And the whole point that we're trying to do is everybody in the church, as they flourish spiritually, the ministry flourishes. And how do they flourish? It is exactly when Paul's prayer is answered in the church. And when that's going on in each life, the church is flourishing. But it begins with each person doing that. If the church is not flourishing, then that means people in the church are not flourishing. Let me give you another example. One of the reasons I think we we're having a good year this year, and we're having a nice run. Man, we've had some good Sundays, we've got some good stuff going on. And why is that happening? I think it's happening because we're doing this chronological Bible, and more people are having a quiet time more times than any other year in the past. And so all these people are in God's word more than they've ever been, and so God can do more in their lives than they ever could, and there's more spiritual flourishing going on because this is prayers beginning to be answered. Right? That's funny. We were talking about, I was laughing with some of the some of the guys, they're like, hey, that's a good sermon on Sunday. I said, Yeah, like here's what happens though, when that's really a reflection of what people in the congregation are doing with Jesus than it is the preacher. When they're attuned in and they're worshiping and they're listening to the Holy Spirit speak to them through the scripture, and all that's happening, all of a sudden the preacher got a lot better. Right? I mean, the whole point is this exactly this prayer, and it all culminates in that idea that the glory of God is reflected and shown through His work in the church. That's what happens. There's the next thing, I'll give you this. This kind of preached right here, won't it? The Messiah's power in us means that the Messiah's power should flow through us. I mean, again, that's exactly what the scripture says. He says, again, that the Messiah dwell in your hearts. Right? He's praying for the power of God to be in your inner man through the working of the Holy Spirit in your life. And when all of that is happening in us and through us, again, verse 19, so that you may be filled with the fullness of God. If you are filled with the fullness of God, what is going to come out of your life by definition? Does that make sense? And so here's what we ought to be asking ourselves Am I reflecting the fullness of God? If I'm not, the problem is not that God is less powerful. The problem is that I'm not coming with the expectation that the power of God in me should be flowing through me. And if it's not, I shut the valve off somewhere in my lack of faith in walking with Him. Now, this is not some weird TV message, you know, and you put your hand on the television and send a $100 check and God does whatever thing or that kind of nonsense. This is biblically rooted right here that to walk by faith in the creator God of the universe, who is the author of life, who conquered death and sin, who rose again and lives inside of us, that's what should be coming out of our lives. Now, isn't that what it says? How many times do we have to read in, in, in, in, and not understand that that means that God's power in us should be coming out of us. If Jesus is in us, then Jesus should come out. If Jesus is not coming out, we have clogged up the pipes somewhere, and that's on our end. And that flows through either sin that we're not repenting of, or a lack of understanding that we're supposed to pursue the magnitude of who God is, and he has invited us, just like he did with Jeremiah, call to me, and I will answer you, and I will show you great and unsearchable things. Love which surpasses knowledge. Then go get some more knowledge. And it begins with this idea, this faith understanding that this is Jesus that we're talking about. And if I'm surrendered to Him and I'm walking with Him and He is filling me, then something greater than me ought to be coming out in my life. And I ought to be having an impact and an influence that is greater than what I have. I get so tired of both ends of this. We're doing dealing with students, and and students are like, well, I'm just a kid. No, you're not. You're a blood-bought child of God. I preached my first sermon when I never dreamed I would be a preacher when I was a seventh grader on a junior high youth retreat one weekend, and I got sick and tired of everybody chewing on each other. And I just went to the youth guy and I went to the youth director and I said, listen, I I I just want to talk to everybody about this ain't where we're supposed to act. And he said, okay, why? Because he wanted this seventh grade boy for Jesus to flourish out of his life. And I wasn't thinking about whether I was qualified or not, and I wasn't thinking about whether my friends were going to chew on me or not, or the ninth graders were bigger than I was a seventh grader, or whatever. I was thinking, this isn't right, and we're God should be working better than this. You're seventh grader, you're sixth grader. You have the power of God in you. You're learning what that means, but that's it. And I got sick and tired of hearing my dad when he was 80. Well, I can't do this and I can't do that. Like, I don't want to hear. I don't want to hear that. You love your grandkids, you play with them, you do all this kind of stuff, you go consult, you play golf, you do all this kind of stuff. Like, go serve Jesus. Get with it and do something. Because the power of God lives in you. I'm tired of hearing all that from both ends of that. We're too busy. I got too many of this, I got too many of that. Like, get some Jesus and the picture of what that looks like. Right? If the Messiah's power is in us, then that's what ought to be coming out. His glory should be reflected in the church. Man, that calls us to have a different picture of church, shouldn't it? Man, I I want to be a church that God's thumbprint is on. Don't you? Let's pray. Well, we thank you for today. We thank you for your scripture, and we are astounded every time we come to it and spend a few minutes with it. At the magnitude of what you want to teach us. And so I pray you'll excite these guys. I pray that this will be one of those things that kind of lights a fire and they go, Man, I want I want some more of that, God. Because it's in your word, it's the promise, it's the expectation. And so I pray you'll just bless them and just stir their faith and just excite them about what you can do in and through them. We thank you for salvation in a time like today where we understand the magnitude of what salvation is in our lives. We pray this in Jesus' name, and everybody said, Hey, you guys, stay cool. Have a good day.