SPEAKER_00: If you're new or visiting, my name's Mark.
SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the leaders here at the church, and we are in the middle of a short three-week series which we will talk more about in just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: We began the start of Ephesians last week.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to pick it up at verse 15 of chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: The longest battle, excuse me, indulge me for a second.
SPEAKER_00: I really like history.
SPEAKER_00: I particularly like wartime history, so I'm going to tell you about a battle.
SPEAKER_00: You're welcome.
SPEAKER_00: The longest battle in World War II, the longest naval battle was the Battle of the Atlantic.
SPEAKER_00: See, Ravash is right with me.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, yeah, I'm Keyden from the first moment because we talk about history all the time.
SPEAKER_00: In the Battle of the Atlantic, if those of you who weren't familiar, the Allies uh were defending the Atlantic against the uh the German U-boats in order to keep open the trade lines that existed between the two countries.
SPEAKER_00: And so what would happen is that US and British uh naval destroyers from the fleets uh would escort merchant ships.
SPEAKER_00: So merchant ships were bringing supplies, munitions, that sort of things from America to Britain, primarily, because uh Europe hadn't been uh counter-invaded yet, across that water.
SPEAKER_00: And because there were German U-boats, submarines, that is, they had to be defended along the way.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the most treacherous part of that journey was a five-day stretch.
SPEAKER_00: There was a five-day stretch during that journey across the Atlantic where the ships had no air cover because they were too far from land.
SPEAKER_00: And so they were left on their own, exposed and vulnerable.
SPEAKER_00: Uh last year uh the movie Greyhound came out uh on Apple uh TV Plus, and uh it's uh based on a book by H.
SPEAKER_00: M.
SPEAKER_00: Forster called The Good Shepherd, uh, but it was written and starring Tom Hanks, and he's the captain of one of these destroyers called The Greyhound, and it documents this passage uh across the Atlantic.
SPEAKER_00: It's his first command.
SPEAKER_00: He's been newly promoted.
SPEAKER_00: He was a he was a paper pusher within the US Navy.
SPEAKER_00: He was a a desk uh a desk uh officer and is given this command of this naval destroyer leading this group across the Atlantic.
SPEAKER_00: And there are great moments of the uh of battle scenes, of action scenes, but one of the things that the movie, and the book as well, really majors on is the psychological component of the crossing.
SPEAKER_00: So if you've seen the the movie, one of the one of the most haunting uh moments are when the German U-boat captains uh tune into their radio frequency and say the wolf pack is hunting you, and they're coming at this really trying to lower morale.
SPEAKER_00: It's really a very good uh movie.
SPEAKER_00: Um it's good because one of the things that it focuses on is not just the action, but Hank's own wrestling with himself.
SPEAKER_00: The kind of fear of uh letting down his crew, second-guessing, self-doubt, the the pressure of leading not just the people on the destroyer that he's on, uh, but leading uh this whole convoy.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we looked at in the first of our sermon series of Navigating Change about how it was important to have the right goal, the right fixed point.
SPEAKER_00: And we saw from the first 14 verses of chapter one that that was Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He is that Polaris, that that north star, that fixed point in our night sky.
SPEAKER_00: But this morning it's slightly different.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just enough to know exactly what your destination is, it's that we need to know what sort of mindset in order to navigate us there.
SPEAKER_00: What sort of character do we need to exhibit in order to navigate the changes of life that we go through as followers of Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Tom Hanks's character and those in the Battle of the Atlantic knew their fixed bearing.
SPEAKER_00: They knew that they were heading to Plymouth, that was their destination, and yet there was the need of resolve and character and courage in order to help them to navigate those waters.
SPEAKER_00: And so this morning, Paul prays for these Christians, and you'll see that actually it links back because at the start of verse 15 he says, for this reason.
SPEAKER_00: That is, given all that I've just said, given the fact that I've just told you about what God is doing on that grand eternal scale of bringing everything under Christ, united in him.
SPEAKER_00: That's the that's the destination, that's the that's the spiritual plymouth of all of history, of all of every time and every people.
SPEAKER_00: That's where all of the cosmos is going.
SPEAKER_00: It is being brought under submission under Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's for this reason.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna pray for you now, and I'm gonna pray certain things for you because you need them in order to be able to navigate the waters until you reach that point.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: And so let's look at uh three things.
SPEAKER_00: Not normally a three-point sermon sort of guy, just FYI, but this so happens to be a three-pointer.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at three things uh that Paul prays for or points us to.
SPEAKER_00: There's more in these verses, but we'll draw out three.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing that Paul prays is that they would have wisdom and revelation.
SPEAKER_00: And so part of our navigating through seasons of change with Christ as that fixed point, is that that's something to pray for, that's something to seek in our own lives, to seek wisdom and revelation.
SPEAKER_00: Um, looking down at verse 16, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
SPEAKER_00: Uh my cousin growing up, when he and I were small, he's four years younger than me, uh, he had a catchphrase uh that still kind of he gets teased for in our family.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he would always say, I know this.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you were telling him, he'd say, I know this, or I know that.
SPEAKER_00: He never wanted to acknowledge that he had learnt anything or that he'd been corrected.
SPEAKER_00: I know this.
SPEAKER_00: And so he was nicknamed for a long time in our family.
SPEAKER_00: I know this! I know that.
SPEAKER_00: One of the mistakes that people make is uh never wanting to acknowledge uh that there are areas in which they need help uh to grow or need to receive teaching or correction.
SPEAKER_00: It's an immature person, isn't it, that thinks that they have nothing to learn, no more wisdom to seek.
SPEAKER_00: And sadly, it can creep from time to time into our discipleship as followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We can think that we have mastered what it means to follow him.
SPEAKER_00: We find it hard uh to take the input of others, even if it's loving advice or correction, we feel like we get defensive or we just want to go, I know this, like my cousin.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul knows that these young Christians need wisdom and revelation from God.
SPEAKER_00: They have that fixed point, that constant bearing that is Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But in the day-to-day of how to get there, of how to pursue him in the various areas of your life, to keep on following him, especially when it's hard.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the first thing that Paul acknowledges is that requires wisdom and revelation.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that phrase wisdom and revelation, what does it mean?
SPEAKER_00: It's funny, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: When you read the Bible, you can kind of kind of you can skirt over and think, oh, I know what that means, but when you stop and think, ah, what does he mean by wisdom and revelation?
SPEAKER_00: Revelation, that word, has two main uses in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The first use uh of the word revelation in the Bible is to describe uh the disclosure of God's purposes in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The revealing, the disclosure of God's purposes.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's called the book of Revelation, because it begins with the words, the revelation of Jesus Christ, that is, the disclosure of Jesus, the unveiling.
SPEAKER_00: It literally comes from the word to pull to pull back the curtain on.
SPEAKER_00: And so it can mean that.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's the book of Revelation, not the book of Revelations.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have lots of revelations, it has one revelation, it's Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's the first way that it's used.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the second way that it's used in the Bible is to mean uh illumination, spiritual illumination or enlightenment of one's mind to understand what God has disclosed, and how to make sense of that and your place in that.
SPEAKER_00: Paul here in his prayer seems, I think, to be using the second sense of illumination, of enlightenment.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because he's just spent 14 verses giving the disclosure.
SPEAKER_00: So he's shown them everything that God is doing in the universe, and they say, My prayer is that God would more and more enlighten your hearts, your minds to understand the implications of that for your life and how you orientate and find your place in that.
SPEAKER_00: Growing as followers of Jesus, especially through seasons of change.
SPEAKER_00: We're going through a season of change as a as a church.
SPEAKER_00: You may uh probably be aware though if you're visiting, you won't be.
SPEAKER_00: This is our penultimate Sunday in this in this place.
SPEAKER_00: Next Sunday we move.
SPEAKER_00: The van shows up and we pack up all of our stuff and move to our our new home uh over at the the Odeon Movie Theatre.
SPEAKER_00: And so we are going through flux.
SPEAKER_00: What will that mean?
SPEAKER_00: A brand new area of the city as Anya prayed for, new people to to reach.
SPEAKER_00: It'll be a change for us all, not to mention the changes that uh you individually have experienced over these last months, whether you've recently moved to Ireland, recently moved to this church.
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things to do that Paul would encourage us is to pray that in the midst of all of that flux, that one, we would have that constant fixed point that is Jesus, that constant bearing in the you know, looming large over the horizon of our lives, but that also that we would be seeking wisdom and that illumination to understand the implications of what that means and all of the changes that we're going through and what God is teaching us in that.
SPEAKER_00: That we would ask him.
SPEAKER_00: You when you're when you're feeling adrift, just to use another kind of nautical uh uh metaphor, when you're feeling adrift or you're not quite sure what your what the best direction is for you right now, have you asked God?
SPEAKER_00: Have you sought him?
SPEAKER_00: Have you said, can you give me a spirit of wisdom and revelation to understand how my life fits into this context of what you are doing in the world?
SPEAKER_00: To ask him what he is doing in a particular circumstance, to ask him what you need to see, what you need to know, what you need to learn.
SPEAKER_00: One of the mature ways of dealing with change is to ask God, what are you what are you trying to teach me?
SPEAKER_00: What are you showing me about yourself?
SPEAKER_00: What are you revealing about me?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how doesn't COVID's done that?
SPEAKER_00: COVID's revealed a bunch of stuff about us.
SPEAKER_00: It's revealed a bunch of stuff about about what we value, about what we find harder, where we run when things are hard.
SPEAKER_00: It's worth kind of taking a little bit of time and processing that with God in prayer and thinking, what are you teaching me in that?
SPEAKER_00: What are you revealing about yourself?
SPEAKER_00: The result of this prayer for Paul is there in verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: This is why another reason why I think he's talking about this kind of illumination idea, is because in verse 18 he says, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened.
SPEAKER_00: That is that we would be able, with God's help, to see beyond the realities of the immediate situation, and to gain a uh a bigger perspective of what God is doing.
SPEAKER_00: And that's so often the case, isn't it, that when we're when we're in the stress, and change is stressful, when we're in the stress of uh of change, whether it's in in our family circumstances, whether it's in work or whatever it is, one of the things that can happen is that the horizon of our world begins to kind of shrink, and all we can see is the are the things that are immediately in front of us.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that Paul prays for is he's like, I want your spiritual eyes to be uh to be awakened and to be given sight so that you can almost in a second, almost in a sense, step back and expand your horizon and see what God is is doing in and through you just for just for a moment to help you to navigate your way through the eyes of your heart enlightened.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes on, and this is the the second point, that part of God's enlightening work through asking him for that spirit of wisdom and revelation is that you would have hope.
SPEAKER_00: So part of the way that we navigate change is by seeking that wisdom and revelation from God in verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: Another way that we navigate change is that is that we press into hope as we seek to be full of hope.
SPEAKER_00: To lose hope is a is a dreadful thing.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm full of I'm full of war uh imagery and analogy, especially Second World War, but uh Victor Frankel, uh who uh wrote the book Man's Search for Meaning, uh, was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, and he has a very evocative passage which is a bit long for our time now that I that I won't read, which talks about what happened to people in the camps when they lost hope.
SPEAKER_00: The hope was more deadly, Frankel says, than uh than dysentery or or typhus or or cholera or any of the diseases uh that uh that ravaged the camps.
SPEAKER_00: To lose hope was deadly.
SPEAKER_00: It's when people just they just gave up.
SPEAKER_00: And they were literally dead within days.
SPEAKER_00: That if you can see nothing beyond your circumstances, and those circumstances overwhelm and drown you.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that is interesting or perhaps even scary about the predominant worldview in our culture at the minute in the West is that there's no clear future component to it.
SPEAKER_00: You think of the Christian worldview, the Christian worldview has that future component.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about that, that's that's Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Many other worldviews and religions have that future component, whether it's uh Hinduism and the uh and the the movement towards uh the uh that oneness with the uh with the all-soul, there is that future component that helps you to move through suffering.
SPEAKER_00: But in the West right now, one of the things that uh the the Gen Z and uh and people are growing up with is this lack of something to look forward to in the future.
SPEAKER_00: There's such an emphasis on expressing yourself in the moment and being uh true and authentic to yourself in the moment that we lose sight of anything that is that is calling us forward to something else.
SPEAKER_00: It's part of the reason why COVID has been uh so hard for people because it has curtailed those avenues of expression in the present, and because there's no future hope in that worldview, people feel anxious and and and fearful.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's prayer is that the followers of Jesus would know that future component of the Christian life, that they would know that hope to which they have been called.
SPEAKER_00: That they would have that sure and certain knowledge of the future.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Christian hope is.
SPEAKER_00: People use hope in a vague sense, in a in a in a sense of, oh, it may or may not happen, like I hope it doesn't rain later.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, good luck with that.
SPEAKER_00: Um it's kind of vague aspirations.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the way the Bible uses the word hope.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible uses the word hope in a in a in a concrete, sure, certain sort of way, a certain knowledge of the future.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, I want you to know that.
SPEAKER_00: And imagine if that was bedded down into your heart, bedded down into your mind and your soul, how that would actually help to stabilize you through seasons of change, if you really were clinging to that immovable, unshakable hope.
SPEAKER_00: Can't you see how that would be uh a helpful resource that God has given you through the seasons of change as you navigate them?
SPEAKER_00: And Paul's saying, I want you, Christian, to have that.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know that hope that God has called you to.
SPEAKER_00: That is what biblical hope is and offers us.
SPEAKER_00: It is a certain and strengthening reality that we need for the changes of life.
SPEAKER_00: But hope for what?
SPEAKER_00: Or hope in what?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, in a sense, it is hope for the future return of Jesus for all things to be united under him, but there's more than that here.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the second half of verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: So he says, When the eyes of your hearts enlighten, that you might know the hope to uh what is the hope to which he has called you, and then he's got this interesting phrase.
SPEAKER_00: What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints?
SPEAKER_00: Paul has already talked about an inheritance back in verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: We saw that last week.
SPEAKER_00: He said that the Christian was moving forward to uh to obtaining an inheritance that the Holy Spirit has been given us as a guarantee, as a down payment of that.
SPEAKER_00: And so we concluded last week that the inheritance that the uh that the Christian is moving forward to is to is to have all of and to enjoy God.
SPEAKER_00: That that is the greatest gift of salvation, not not eternal life necessarily, though that is a consequence of it, not even redemption, though that is a consequence of it.
SPEAKER_00: The inheritance that we move forward to is more of God, enjoying Him, having Him satisfy our souls.
SPEAKER_00: But the sense of verse 18 is slightly different.
SPEAKER_00: The sense of verse 18 is actually the other side of the coin in a sense.
SPEAKER_00: That when he says that you would know what are the riches of his, that's God's glorious inheritance in the saints.
SPEAKER_00: I think it really means this.
SPEAKER_00: I think it can be best rendered as this.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, Christian, I want you to have hope that comes from the knowledge that you are unfailingly God's.
SPEAKER_00: That you are unfailingly his.
SPEAKER_00: His glorious inheritance in the saints.
SPEAKER_00: That is, the saints are God's glorious inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: And that's how he's always talked about God's people in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: He's talked about them in terms of them being God's inheritance inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: And just as he said in verse 11 that God will be yours, he's saying in verse 18, you are unshakingly, unswervingly, unfailingly God's.
SPEAKER_00: You are his.
SPEAKER_00: Derive hope from that.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: Paul wants this to fuel and to fire our hope now that the Christian is unswervingly and eternally God's.
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, this hope that we need is further strengthened, made more sure by the immeasurable greatness of his power that is displayed towards us who believe.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power to us who believe according to the working of his great might?
SPEAKER_00: That is, Paul is praying for you this morning, that you would see with the eyes of faith these glorious realities that you are God's, that you belong to Him through faith in Jesus, and that you would see with the eyes of faith the greatness of the power that he has displayed in your life, in redeeming you, in saving you, in making you his, in how he has preserved and has been patient with you.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that hard to see sometimes?
SPEAKER_00: It feels like progress in the Christian life is so incrementally slow.
SPEAKER_00: Paul wants your spiritual eyes to be wide awake so that you would see his power at work in ye, and that that would give you hope for the future.
SPEAKER_00: That power that God has given us did something else previously.
SPEAKER_00: That's where Paul goes in verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: That power that God is working in you is power that raised Jesus from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: That he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but in the age to come.
SPEAKER_00: What is this power that God is working in you?
SPEAKER_00: What has it done previously?
SPEAKER_00: It raised the Lord Jesus from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And where is he now?
SPEAKER_00: He's seated in heaven, and we're going to look at that in the third point a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00: But the implication of Christ being seated in heaven is that he's ruling and reigning.
SPEAKER_00: Over what?
SPEAKER_00: Over every rule, every power and authority, over every enemy.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is supreme over all.
SPEAKER_00: What news that is what hope-giving, life-giving news that must be for us.
SPEAKER_00: Can you fathom?
SPEAKER_00: I just this week just been slack-jawed and broken-hearted for people in Afghanistan for the images of what is being wrought there.
SPEAKER_00: Images of people handing their children across barbed wire to escape.
SPEAKER_00: Of people fleeing to the mountains because they are believers in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Every enemy of the people of God, and that they are unswervingly and unfailingly and eternally His.
SPEAKER_00: May those brothers and sisters whose names we don't know, may the Lord by His Spirit impress that on their hearts and give them courage.
SPEAKER_00: Give them peace in ways that we cannot even begin to fathom right now.
SPEAKER_00: But if we want that to be true for them, may we long that it would be true for us as we look to our own challenges and changes to navigate that seem to just bleach and pale into insignificance.
SPEAKER_00: It's almost overwhelming, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing technology, technology, 24-hour news media, the fact that you can access all of this just on your phone first thing in the morning.
SPEAKER_00: You know what that does?
SPEAKER_00: It gives you a sense of omniscience.
SPEAKER_00: It's almost like we know more about what's going on in the world than anybody else in history, right?
SPEAKER_00: So we have a sense of omniscience, a kind of all-knowingness, because we can just pull out our phone and get whatever knowledge we want to access.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, and yet, what we don't possess is omnipotence.
SPEAKER_00: We're not all-powerful, omnipotent.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the consequences of that is if you are all-knowing, which we almost can be now, but are not, we haven't increased in power, that's overwhelming.
SPEAKER_00: We need to come and cry out to the one who is not just omniscient, but omnipotent, not just all-knowing, but all-powerful.
SPEAKER_00: And to trust him.
SPEAKER_00: We want to seek wisdom and revelation, to be full of hope, and thirdly, to be humbled by astounding grace.
SPEAKER_00: In normal series, two, one to ten would be a whole other sermon in themselves, a great evangelistic text.
SPEAKER_00: But in this series, in this morning, I want to set it in the context of what Paul has already been saying because it flows on through, begins with and.
SPEAKER_00: So there is a connection again with what has gone before.
SPEAKER_00: Keep verse 20 of chapter 1 in mind, this idea that God has raised Christ and seated him in the heavenly places.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Paul, at the start of chapter 2, in a sense pulls back, goes back in time a little bit, and reminds you, believer in Jesus, how far he has brought you, how far we have come because of him.
SPEAKER_00: He reminds us of what God has done for us in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the essence of the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_00: 2 verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.
SPEAKER_00: People like to say that Christianity is a crutch, that Christianity is an emotional crutch for the weak.
SPEAKER_00: It's far more accurate to say that Christianity is a defibrillator for the dead.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just that we are weak, it's that we're dead.
SPEAKER_00: Sin has killed us.
SPEAKER_00: We're dead.
SPEAKER_00: We're dead because you cannot be anything else if you turn from the source of life.
SPEAKER_00: And that is what we have all done by nature and choice.
SPEAKER_00: If you turn from life, you become dead.
SPEAKER_00: That is what we did.
SPEAKER_00: That is what our first parents did, and that is what we do before God acts to save us.
SPEAKER_00: We were dead in our sin.
SPEAKER_00: And what is sin?
SPEAKER_00: Sin is our addiction to me and myself and I.
SPEAKER_00: And it kills us.
SPEAKER_00: It is the natural state of us.
SPEAKER_00: That is why Paul at a couple of different points says, look, this is the same as all mankind.
SPEAKER_00: All of us were like this.
SPEAKER_00: Following our own way, seeking our own desires.
SPEAKER_00: Even the good things that we would do come tainted by our desire for recognition, adulation, and praise.
SPEAKER_00: And so God needed to act.
SPEAKER_00: And why did God need it to act?
SPEAKER_00: Because we were dead.
SPEAKER_00: Corpses don't tend to do much.
SPEAKER_00: Clean up your act morally to a corpse.
SPEAKER_00: Not going to, not going to move, not going to say anything.
SPEAKER_00: Something outside of us needed to act.
SPEAKER_00: And so we read down in verse 4 but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses.
SPEAKER_00: See that?
SPEAKER_00: He loved you while you were dead.
SPEAKER_00: He loved you before you could do anything for him.
SPEAKER_00: He loved you before you could reciprocate in any way.
SPEAKER_00: That's when he loved you.
SPEAKER_00: He made us alive together with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: By grace, you have been saved.
SPEAKER_00: And what has he done?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: He's raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
SPEAKER_00: Can you believe it?
SPEAKER_00: He's just told us in verse 20 of chapter 1 that the perfect, beautiful, glorious, transcendent, eternal, gracious Lord Jesus has been seated at the right hand of God the Father in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And on one level, although that blows your mind if you really think about it, but on one level, even our minds say, well, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: He deserves that.
SPEAKER_00: He's pretty wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: But then he astounds us by saying that he has taken dead people, people who have turned from God the source of life.
SPEAKER_00: He's not just made them alive and said, right, try again, off you go.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: He has plucked us from the grave and seated us on a throne with his son.
SPEAKER_00: We are seated with him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus died a death that he didn't deserve.
SPEAKER_00: He died the death that we deserve.
SPEAKER_00: He was raised, and he was given what he deserved.
SPEAKER_00: The Christian is raised with him and given what we do not deserve.
SPEAKER_00: That is grace.
SPEAKER_00: The consequence of that grace is there for us in verse 9, where he says, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
SPEAKER_00: We contribute nothing to our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: It is not about how much money you give, how good you are, what you wear, what you do, what you do or do not eat, what you do and do not drink, where you do or do not go?
SPEAKER_00: Your changed life might result in a change in those things, but it is not secure the change in the first place.
SPEAKER_00: That is only and always the work of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so how can we boast?
SPEAKER_00: How can we boast in our own efforts?
SPEAKER_00: How can we boast in our own goodness?
SPEAKER_00: This amazing grace must astound us again into humility.
SPEAKER_00: To not thinking first and foremost of ourselves, but humbly, faithfully, trusting God through the seasons of life.
SPEAKER_00: We walk humbly.
SPEAKER_00: That's why Jesus says when he calls his disciples to him, he says, What does he say?
SPEAKER_00: If you try to save your life, you'll lose it.
SPEAKER_00: But if you lose your life for my sake and for the gospel, you'll save it.
SPEAKER_00: Take up your cross and follow me.
SPEAKER_00: How do we navigate change?
SPEAKER_00: We navigate change, brothers and sisters, with the splinters of our cross on our back.
SPEAKER_00: We navigate change as an army marching on its knees, blown away by the great grace that he has lavished upon us, astounded that he would make us alive and seed us with him.
SPEAKER_00: We cannot go through this move in two weeks' time and think that it is because we have done marvelously in expanding the reach of City Church.
SPEAKER_00: We cannot go through this change thinking much of ourselves, but seeking to make much of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He loved us enough to make us alive with his son.
SPEAKER_00: May that give you confidence, courage, perseverance now.
SPEAKER_00: That with the changes and stresses and particularities of your situation, that he loves you still and will bring you on that last day to that eternal shore where sin and death will be no more.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Strengthen us, O Lord, we pray, by your grace.
SPEAKER_00: Give us, as Paul has prayed, so we pray, that spirit of wisdom and revelation.
SPEAKER_00: Enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we might see the hope that you have laid up for us, the hope in the knowledge that we are unswervingly yours, the hope that Christ is ruling and reigning, and that we, dead people, have been made alive and seated with Him.
SPEAKER_00: Strengthen weak knees, we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Give us increased faith, we ask.