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Father, we just ask that you would speak to us. We thank you for what we've already sung about you and to you. We thank you, God, that your work in this room already. I know my heart's been stirred in the ways that I needed to be reminded and recentered on the person and work of Jesus. That it's not based on my merit that I get into the kingdom of heaven. It's based on Jesus' perfection and his work on my behalf. And that's the same case for every person in this room. I pray that God you would help us today to really hear from you, and then God give us the courage to obey you. We pray it's in your strong name, Jesus. Amen. So we wrapped up our series last week on all things new, and this week we're actually starting a new series. About a year ago, I was praying, asking God what he wanted us to do in uh 2017, and felt like God was leading us to teach through the book of 1 Corinthians. Uh, some of you have gone through the book of 1 Corinthians before, some of you have heard teaching from the book of 1 Corinthians before, uh, but really since God was leading us to do that, and so uh here we are a year later, now putting this into motion. And so today is a little bit of an introductory Sunday, but there's some real practical applications I think we'll gather even in the introductory material, okay? So it's not just going to be an intellectual exercise of hearing some content about 1 Corinthians. The hope is to help us walk away with, okay, God, here's how I can obey or I can apply what I've heard, uh, even through hearing some of the background material. So if you have your Bible, I'd encourage you to go ahead and pull it out to 1 Corinthians. Um I don't know uh uh how familiar you are with your Bible, but it's in the New Testament, and it's a letter uh that was written by the Apostle Paul. Again, Paul being inspired by the Holy Spirit to write this letter. As we say with every one of the texts that we uh we read from this this Bible, this scripture, that um just because a man wrote it doesn't mean that it's from that man alone. This is from God's heart. Okay, he inspired them to write it, and so it's authoritative. Uh it has insight and it has power because God, God's hand is on it. I just want to make sure that we we all know that these are God's words uh written through the Apostle Paul. Okay? So that being said, um, just a few background things on the the city of Corinth and then on the letter uh to 1 Corinthians, of 1 Corinthians. So Corinth is similar to Austin, has some similarities to Austin, and it's part of the reason why I was drawn to it. Uh is because it's kind of a cool book. Uh many people, when they read the Bible, they go, you know, the Bible's kind of this weird book that doesn't really seem to be relevant to my life today. Uh where how what's the connection? What's the connection between, you know, this ancient book, again, and my my life today? And I think Corinthians, uh, this book is helpful because we can relate with a lot of the things that Corinthians were dealing with. And I'll explain to you why that's the case, but just let me tell you a little bit of the details of Corinthians. It was a major trade city, it was a commercial center. Um, in fact, it it was uh a center where a lot of trade was going on, a lot of people were coming in and out of it, and and so as a result of that, uh it had a very a lot of influence. People came through Corinth and they they knew um it was a very significant place in its day. It was a relatively young city, a new city. Um it was kind of a hip, cool city. That's why I say it's kind of like Austin, right? Um it was this cool place, and uh they were technologically advanced. Uh it was very wealthy, and the this the money that was there was new wealth. It wasn't like old wealth, it was new wealth, and so it was because a lot of the industry that was being developed and trade and those kind of things. And so it was a cool place. Um it was a capital city. That's like Austin, right? It's a capital city of a Roman province at the day of in its day, and uh and so it had influence politically. Uh there were some some leaders that were there uh that were Roman. Uh it was uh an intellectual center. It wasn't as intellectually uh elite as Athens, but it was an intellectual center of its day, so there was a lot of philosophy going on there, a lot of people sitting around having conversations about the world, and you know, it's just kind of typical of Greek days. Uh and so you've got you've got a lot of philosophers there in the city, and so there was there was a lot of that going on, trains of thought uh that were being propagated. Uh there was also uh it was also a place that was popular for athletics. Uh so if you're an athlete, uh this was a cool place to go. Now uh it was a little different back then, if you know anything about athletics in ancient days. Um their uniforms were a little bit different. We won't get into that. Uh just to say they didn't have one, um, but or clothes for that matter, but they it was a popular place for athletics. That's where they would they would uh they had a lot of athletes around uh Corinth, just something that was known about it. And then a final definition or final uh kind of aspect of of Corinth Corinth is that it was uh it was kind of a place known, not kind of, it was really known for its immorality. Uh it was highly immoral. Uh in fact, the the the name Corinth, uh, they began to use it uh as they would say this this idea of Corinthian eyes, which was was this idea of to be immoral, to be sexually immoral in particular. So when you went to Corinth, it was a very pagan place with lots of pagan worship to the Greek gods, and as a result, you could walk out on the street, and it wasn't like it was like hidden, it was out in plain plain sight for everybody to see, prostitution, uh a lot of a lot of sexual immorality in the city. And so uh one of its one of the reasons it was known in its world, in its time, was because it was an immoral city, and that was just kind of the place that it was. And we see that later in the book of 1 Corinthians as it shows up in the local church that was there at Corinth. So that's just a little bit of the background of Corinth, but then there's also Paul's work there. Uh I'm not gonna go back and read it to you today, but if you go to Acts chapter 18, verses 1 through 20, uh, it's in your reading guide this week, which we encourage you to read along with us. We're gonna encourage you during the series to read the passages that we're studying each week. Uh, of course, those are talked about in our life groups each week. And then we would also ask you to read ahead. So we're gonna give you the reading, so you're reading the passage of scripture we're going to cover in the following week in our church gatherings. And so uh Acts 18, 1 through 20 tells us a little bit about the backdrop of Corinthians in this letter and Paul's work there. It was during Paul's second missionary journey, it's where he started it. Um Paul arrives in Corinth after a lot of difficulty. In fact, in the book, he says something uh in verse in chapter 2, he says, I came with much fear and trembling. And he wasn't saying it like just as a kind of a spiritual way of talking about it. He's like literally was fear and trembling because in the beginning of chapter 18 in Acts, the first phrase that says after this, which if you study your Bible, if you're a Bible, a person who likes to study your Bible well, you know when you see phrases like therefore or after this or those transitional phrases, you need to go back and read what's going on before that. Uh, maybe even this week you can go back and do that. But what you'll find is that Paul had just endured a lot of hardship, which was typical for Paul. He endured a lot of difficulty, a lot of struggle. He'd been beaten. Uh and so he shows up on the scene and he says much fear and trembling. He literally is struggling because he has gone through some physical pain and suffering before he arrives at Corinth. Okay? And we know that uh Paul, sometimes we can make him out to be sort of superhuman, like that he never struggled, that he never had difficulty, that he was just this amazing person as a missionary who never struggled with with fear or never struggled with anxiety. But we know that not that's not true. He was a human being just like us. And so he had gone through some difficulty, he had gone through some hardship, and he shows up in Corinth a little bit like gunshot. In fact, so much so that it says in the scripture that uh the Holy Spirit, God brought this message to Paul, this vision, and he said, Paul, it's gonna be okay. You're not alone. There are other believers in the city, keep preaching the gospel. Like Paul needed a pep talk. Anybody else need pep talk sometime to keep walking out your faith? Like if the missionary Paul, the greatest missionary to ever walk the planet, if he needed a pep talk to follow and obey Jesus and to keep preaching the gospel, I'm guessing we do too, right? And so that's what he gets in a very divine, uh, supernatural way. And so Paul is there. And so uh Paul's two primary focuses while he's in Corinth, just is again what we're getting into the book. Two primary focuses, if you summarize what Paul's work there was, is to preach the word and to plant the church. That's what Paul was doing. He was preaching the word of God and he was planting the church there in Corinth. Um, that's a really simple uh simple way to look at it, but that's really significant. That he was preaching God's word, regardless of whether it was popular. That's what we got to do, right? Regardless of whether the people that are the smart ones think it's okay or cool or it's in vogue, he preached the word. That's a good application for us today. We should preach the word of God. We should rest in the word of God, we should trust the word of God, regardless of what the world says about the word and whether they think it's wise or not. And we're gonna talk more about this issue of wisdom in the coming weeks. So he preached the word and he planted the church. Uh, this would not be a place where you'd go, hey, this is this seems like a great place to go plant a church. Everybody seems to be really excited about God here. Let's go let's go work uh work on planting a church here. This would be hard soil. This would be like South Austin, right? This would be like one of those places where you show up and it's like people are resistant. They're they're anti-establishment, they're like anti-uh church. They've got their own thing going, they've got their own ideas about God. And so they're not really interested. But in fact, we know that when Paul shows up there, he starts out in the synagogue and he's starting to help the Jewish people of his day. Uh he would always typically would try to find the Jewish people who already had some frame of reference for the Old Testament. Obviously, if they were Jewish, they they knew the Old Testament passages of Scripture, they knew uh the Torah. Um, and and so he would start there and he would start trying to preach Christ, and he would show them how that it all pointed to Christ and preach the gospel there. And in the synagogue, he shows up, and guess what happens? They say, Iksne, not we're not having it, Paul. Get out of here. So they start to resist him. And here's what Paul does. Paul's Paul's uh, I love this about Paul because, again, sometimes we we sort of glamorize scripture, but it says Paul stands up in front of them and literally takes his clothes and he shakes his clothes out to make sure he gets all the dust and all the residue from the synagogue out of it. And he says, if you guys don't want to hear the message about Jesus, that's fine. Your blood is on your own heads, I'm going somewhere else. Literally, that's what he says. He says, You guys are so hard-hearted, you're so resistant, you're so anti-hearing the truth, that I'm just gonna say, your blood's on your own heads, peace out. Okay? This is Paul, that's my paraphrase, right? That's what he says. So he then goes, he goes next door to Titius Justice's house, who lives right next door, and he starts to set up shop there, and that's where the church in Corinth started. It wasn't in the synagogue, it was in a house, which was a lot, it happened a lot in the ancient world. And guess what happens? Guess who the first convert is? One of the first converts, at least the only one that's listed in Acts 18, is Crispus. And you know what his job was? He was the leader of the synagogue. He was the first one to come to faith. He was the one who actually was one of the founding members of the church in Corinth. He had been over in that synagogue and he had watched Paul stand up and shake his dust out of his clothes and walk next door. And he's the one who says, Man, if Paul's that serious about this message, I gotta hear more. And he literally comes to faith and becomes like a leader in the church at Corinth. That's a pretty awesome thought, right? First it's resistance, and then it's acceptance by this leader, and then the church at Corinth begins to blossom, begins to grow. You know, sometimes when we see hardship or we see difficulty or we see resistance to the gospel, it may be that that's just the moment before God breaks through. It might be that that's just the right condition for God to do something great, right? Is when you see hardship. I remember when my family and I were considering where we were gonna plant a church in Austin, and uh we we looked at the statistics of South Austin, and people said, Don't you know that that's the church planter's graveyard? Like, do you really want to go down there? Do you really? It's like, no, but they're sending us. So here we go, we were going. And we show up in South Austin, and we found pretty fast that there had been 32 churches over a 10 year period of time that started and that shut their doors. And that many people were disillusioned by the church, they were frustrated by the church and indifferent and angry and all kinds of emotions about the church and about God. And what we found is that you know what? It is hard soil. It is hard soil to plant a church, but God is faithful. And God will plant churches, you'll start and establish works wherever he chooses to do it because he's sovereign and he's good and he's powerful. And so we've watched God work and move here in this city, in our place where we live. And there's harder places in the world, by the way. We know that. I'm just I'm making a statement that we know this is an area that has been difficult, but yet God has worked and God has moved, and we're so thankful for that. We're glad to be here. Um, so let's read some of the text from 1 Corinthians chapter 1. We're gonna begin in verse 1, and we're gonna work all the way to verse 9. I'm gonna read the whole section. So hang with me. If you have your own Bible, I encourage you to read it there. Uh, if you don't, uh, it's on the screen, and uh you can read along with me there. Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, to the Church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way, in all your speaking and in all your knowledge, because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore, you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for the Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of the Lord of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, is faithful. So that's the introduction comments from Paul. This is very typical, at least the first three verses, very typical of Paul, uh, as he begins a letter and he begins to uh encourage them, and we're gonna speak exactly to those things today. But I want to start to kind of give you a high-level fly over where we're heading. I want to talk about three sort of primary uh ideas we can derive from these first nine verses that are um sort of overarching principles and ideas from God's word in other places, but also through this text. And then we're gonna talk about three personal applications. Like how do we actually take what we're hearing in this section and apply it to our lives personally? So you can walk out of the room this morning and saying, okay, here's what God is calling me to do. Now the first one is this. And notice we're using this language of God's grace. Uh, but the first one is this God calls his church by his grace. God calls his church by his grace. Before I move into this idea of calling, uh, because this is a significant word in these first nine verses, and it'll continue to be a significant word throughout the entire book of 1 Corinthians. Let me just briefly remind us of a definition of grace in case you don't have one. Uh just a really foundational, uh, helpful, succinct definition of grace is God's unmerited favor. Okay, God's unmerited favor. You ask theologians, that's what you're gonna hear, is God's unmerited favor. Meaning that you cannot earn this, right? It is a gift. It is not mercy where God withholds something that we deserve, it's where God gifts us with something we don't deserve. That's what grace is all about. And so when we say God's grace, and we're gonna continue to see this play out through this book, and really as you read the Bible, you see God's grace all over it. Uh, we understand that God is a God who gifts people, humanity, something that we don't deserve. That's salvation. That's rescue, that's reconciliation, redemption, uh, rescue, right? That's what God has gifted us by his grace, by his kindness toward us, not because we deserve it, but because he is that good, because he is that gracious with us. So let's look at verse one and two again. In light of this, God calls his church by his grace. It says, Paul called an apostle of Christ Jesus by God's will, and Sosthenes, our brother, to the church at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus and are called as saints with all those in every place who call in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. Now, two things. First again, um, Paul starts out by talking about his own call, and then he talks about their call. He talks about his own call, and then he talks about their call. Paul had personally received a call from God to become one of God's children, to be saved, to be rescued, to be redeemed, okay? All those words, to be forgiven. Uh that's significant because Paul understands what it means to be called. Now there's two ideas of calling in Scripture. One is this idea that there is a sort of a universal call, a general call from God. It's really an invitation. It's an invitation for any person who would follow him, who would receive the gift of salvation. God offers that call to all people. God offers the call to you in this room today. If you've never put your trust in Christ, God gives us a general invitation to receive the gift of salvation. Okay? It's a call that's there. It's all through Scripture. And that's why Scripture says anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Some people say that Christianity is very narrow-minded. It's very narrow, it's very limiting. It's this exclusive club. Well, I want you to know that the Bible reminds us that anyone who wants to come after him can do it. Anyone who wants to receive the gift of salvation can do it. Okay? But here's the second part of calling. It's not just about this invitation to receive the gift of salvation. There's also the idea of an effectual call. Where that God moves our hearts to where we can no longer resist him. Now, I'm going to tell you right now, both of these ideas are mysterious. First off, that God would have anything to do with humanity in our rebellious state is a mystery. It goes back to his grace. That God would invite us. I mean, does he know us? Absolutely he knows us. Does he know our issues? Absolutely he knows us. Does he know that when we uh we are sinners and that we've resisted him and rebelled against him? Absolutely he knows that, and yet he still chooses to give us an invitation. But, however, here's what I know also to be true. None of us in this room can save ourselves, can rescue ourselves. None of us on our own merit or our own ability would actually choose God. This is a mystery, okay? I'm not going to resolve this for you today. There's a tension in this. I believe with all my heart that somehow God's Spirit moves on the heart of humanity, moves on us as people, and He compels us to follow Him. He compels us to follow Him. This goes back with what we were saying in our last series that to become a new creature in Christ, to become a new creation, is not something that we do for God, but something he has done for us. And so I believe with all my heart this morning that God's Holy Spirit would move, move hearts. And I go back into my own journey, my own faith journey. At some point, God moved me to the point in my life, to the place in my life where I stopped resisting him, where I stopped saying no to him and said yes. And I believe that Paul is speaking to this exact issue that he was called. Because you guys know what Paul was doing before he became an apostle? He was a terrorist. Okay? He was a terrorist. He would have been on the par with ISIS because he was going around taking Christians, dragging them out of their homes, throwing them in prison, or killing them. I mean, he was doing those kind of things before God calls him. What kind of transformation that is to see that picture? Why does that kind of thing happen? Well, because God called him, compelled him. Paul, come follow me. It was dramatic, it was powerful. Now, the other thing about this is that he doesn't just say it was my call, but also you are called. You are called as saints. We've talked about this before, so I don't want to give this a ton of time this morning, but just know this. When we come to Christ, we are now called as saints. In fact, he says you have been sanctified. You have been made pure and holy and blameless before Christ. That's good news this morning, guys. Because you probably, if you're like me, you don't feel holy and blameless and pure, but that's how God sees you because of Christ. You have been called. You were compelled to follow him, and you've been now called in Christ to be sanctified, to be saints in Christ. And verse 9 gives us clarity about where this calling leads us, by the way. I should just make sure we understand that in verse 9, we're reminded that God is faithful. You were called by him into what? A fellowship with his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. You know what God is calling you and I into? A relationship with him. He's calling us into fellowship, into relationship with him. And that's not possible except through the person of Jesus. His death on the cross, forgiving us of our sins by paying the penalty for them. His making a way so that we could come to God. That's the only way that we can come to God, right? Right? Okay. So we know that Paul is now appealing to their call. And this is significant because I've already told you a little bit of this, and we're you're gonna see this as we get into this book. Uh this church was pretty messed up. There were some pretty big issues going on here. They had divisions among them where they were taking sides and they were like saying, I'm after this leader, I'm after this leader. So the divisiveness was really eating the church up. We also see that in that church they had major immorality, which the cultural immorality had gotten inside the church. So there were some issues going on with sexual activity with some of their members, and they were just like turning a blind eye to that. We see that they start using spiritual gifts as a way to kind of puff themselves up and to get prideful and to have levels of, hey, well, you're better than this person, you're more valuable than this person based on spiritual gifting. So there were some major issues, but where does Paul start? Does he just like go right in and start railing on them? I mean, that's what I would do, right? I mean, if I know they're messed up, I don't have time to sit here and like make them feel good about it. I just need to make sure that they're changing their behavior. When my kids are struggling, my my nature is to go straight in and say, address the behavior. And if you're in Walmart, that's what you probably want to need to do, right? Like, we've got to address the behavior. We've got to stop the behavior. But here's here's notice what Paul does. He doesn't start in the behavior, he reminds them who they are. He reminds them who they are. That they are the called out ones, that they are called as saints. They are sanctified in Christ. Why is this a big deal? Because our identity always precedes our activity. Who we are is more important than what we do. Not that what we do is not important, but who we are is more important than what we do. And so when you're addressing issues and behavior, here's the deal. If you're struggling with behavior in your life, I'm struggling with behavior in my life. It's because we've forgotten, if you're a Christ follower, if you're a person who has put your trust in Jesus and you've received the Holy Spirit, it's because you have forgotten who you are. You're not living now in light of who God is and who you are because of him. Does that make sense? A way to say this for you grammar people in the room is that Paul always starts out with the indicative before the imperative. Some of you are like, we're geeks. We like that. That's good. Hey, listen. You have to understand who you are before you just start operating in what you do. And because here's the problem. In church, a lot of times we flip the two. This is what church a lot of times becomes. It becomes if you will do these things, then you can become this person. If you will do these things for God, then you can become a loved child of God. If you do these things for God, then you can become this. Listen, I want you to hear me. That's not the Bible. The Bible is God acts on us. Remember what the scripture says. We love because he first love us. We serve because we have been served. We give because he has given to us. You see, we're not we're not propagating a religion here. We're talking about Jesus and the gospel. We're talking about a faith that says, I receive this gift of this new identity in Christ, and now I live from that place. This doesn't lower the bar on sin. This heightens the bar on sin. This means now that my identity shapes all that I am doing in Christ. It shapes all that. And when I'm out of line, I need to be reminded. That's what churches gatherings like this are good for, is to be reminded of who I am in Christ. To be reminded that I am not operating in a way that is consistent with what God has called me to do and who he's called me in my identity. So, that being said, the second thing we notice in the high level is that God gifts his church by his grace. God gifts his church by his grace. Now, we're gonna spend more time on this on the book, in this book later on, because we're gonna get to a whole section on spiritual gifting. So it's gonna be fun, and I'll just be honest now. There's some parts to 1 Corinthians that are tricky. And we're gonna deal with some passages that you're gonna be like scratching your head. You're like, what is he talking about? And how does this even fit? And we're gonna, we're gonna, part of teaching through a book is healthy for us, and it's also hard. But we're gonna look at this book and we're gonna ask God to show us what this means for us. But we know he says in verse 5 through 7 something powerful, it's important. He says this. He says, For in him you have been enriched in every way, in all your speaking and in all your knowledge, because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore, you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He commends them, he celebrates the fact that they've got these spiritual gifts and that God's gifted those to build up the body and that those are at work in Corinth. And so he's really excited for them in this, and he reminds them of this. Again, this is one of those moments where we're reminded of sort of the compliment sandwich. If you ever have to have a hard conversation, what do you do? Start with good, give them the hard, then come back and affirm them on the back end, right? So Paul's giving them some good stuff, but he's setting them up. He's saying, You guys got all these gifts, and he's getting ready to go. Boom. Man, but you guys are really messed up in how you're functioning in them. But at this point, he's reminding them, you guys have got these gifts, and so they're probably like starting to get their chest out, probably getting a little excited, real puffed up as they're hearing this letter be read to their church. So we know that God gifts, and we know that God provides all that's needed for his mission to be accomplished in his church. Um, we had this discussion at our elder meeting this week about this issue of gifting, and just suffice it to say, we believe that God provides every gift that's needed for his church to grow. He does. Now, here's one of the interesting things. We believe that, as we said last week, that there's only one big C church, and that sometimes even in a geography, that God gifts particular expressions of the church in different ways, and that all those collectively can work together to see the gospel advanced. Meaning this, that sometimes we may not have a particular gift that would help the body in a particular way, but another expression might. And so we see that when God writes these letters through his apostle Paul, that he is instructing them that, you know, this is the church at Corinth. They didn't have like First Baptist Church Corinth, first United Methodist Corinth, you know, they didn't have all these divisions, they didn't have all these different separations. It was the church at Corinth. And they all could work together for the purpose of seeing the mission advanced. Wouldn't it be awesome if we still function that way? All the divisions that are now in the body of Christ just undermines the impact God has and desires. I mean, John 17 has not become true. It's actually gone opposite of John 17, which is where Jesus prays for oneness among his people, among his children. So those supernatural gifts are required, that are required to do God's work. They're in the church today. Uh finally, at a high-level observation, God sustains his church by his grace. He sustains his church by his grace. I hope you know this to be true, but God is a God who keeps his promises. And if he calls us to something, he's going to help us accomplish it. He's going to call us, he's going to carry us through it. He's going to. That's the God that we serve. Philippians 1 6, which is another letter Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, he says this in verse 6. It's one of my favorite verses. He says, He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete that until the day of Christ Jesus' return. That's good, isn't it? Aren't you glad that God hasn't called us into something and then he's going to like leave us, abandon us? Alright, I hope you guys can do it. Alright, watch you fell. Listen, God is going to carry us, to carry his church. He's going to accomplish his work. We said this last week. When he said he was going to build his church, he's going to build his church. He's going to finish the work that he started through his bride called the church. And he's called us into this fellowship again. Verse 8 and 9, exactly what I'm communicating here. He says this, he will also strengthen you to the end. What's the end? When Christ returns. When Christ returns to the end, so that you will be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's a great word. God is faithful. You were called by him into fellowship with his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. So God is faithful. He's called us into the fellowship, and he will make sure that that work is accomplished. So finally, I want us to look at three personal applications from this. Okay? Three personal applications. First one, we look to God to define us. We look to God to define us. Let me mention the point that I made earlier that God calls us by his grace. He calls his church by his grace, which isn't just the community, it's the individual. And therefore, God is the one who actually defines who we are. He defines us as his children. I want you guys to hear me say this. This is really important for us to remember. That we as human beings were made to worship. And because we were made to worship, worship, if you really want to boil it down, what are we worshiping? We put our worship into things that we hope will give us worth, value, uh they'll give us significance, they'll give us meaning. And so we're made for that. We've said before, we use the illustration, that all of our lives, it's like there's a hose that's connected to our hearts that is just pouring out worship nonstop. You can't shut it off. The question is, is where are we going to put our worship? Like where are we going to direct the hose? Right? And so the point being is that in this issue of who defines us, uh, many times we will look, and I if I asked the question out loud this morning, what do people look to to define them? You guys could pretty quickly come up with a list. 15 to 20 things. I mean, no time. Uh I could just probably name some of them off without even asking you. Like work. It's one of the first questions that one man asks another man. What do you do? Why? Because that tends to be where we get our definition, we get our worth, we get our value, right? It's a practical question, it's a small talk, but it just reveals a little bit about how we function. A lot of times we get our worth from our work. Or for some, we get our worth from parenting, our children. We get our worth from our children, or we get our worth from how much we accumulate. We get our worth from, I mean, the list goes on, right? It's accomplishments, it's it's even sometimes pleasurable things or experiences. We get our worth from those things. We remember this morning, and I call us to remember, that we should look to God to define us. We should look to God to define us. We should look to God, and we can look to God to define us because He's the one who made us. He's the one who really knows us. He knows our issues, he knows our struggles, he knows what we were made to do, he knows what we were made for. And remember this morning that if you're in Christ, you are called, again, to be a child of God, to be a saint, to be set apart for God's purposes and for his glory. That's what you were made for. That's what you were called into. You were called into this relationship with God. So we look to God to define us. I could say a lot more on that this morning. Um, for the sake of time, I won't. But I know that some of you walked in the door and you're pretty beat down, you're pretty distraught, pretty discouraged. Let me just ask you this question: where are you looking for your worth? Where are you looking for your acceptance? I mean, it's easy for us to look sometimes at teenagers and to say, oh, look at those teenagers being teenagers, you know, trying to fit in and they're being silly, doing these dumb things, making dumb choices because they're teenagers. Listen, we don't outgrow that. We don't. It's just, it gets more sophisticated, but it's the same issue. We still continue to look to things in the world to get acceptance, to gain worth, to gain value. I do it in my life. I do it as a parent. When I fail as a parent, or struggle, or my kids struggle, my identity feels like it's under attack and I get insecure. Why am I insecure? Because I'm looking to my kids to define me. Define my worth, my value. When I struggle as a husband, when I'm a bad husband, and I have those days, I can find myself struggling with really believing who I am in Christ. And I think all of us in this room, we could find different ways how this plays itself out. One of the reasons we hide from each other, one of the reasons we like to keep everything at the surface, it's because we don't really want people to know us. We're fearful that if they know us, they'll reject us. And that's because we look to people to give us our definition rather than Christ. Are you with me? This goes on. This is so many implications. But we are free in Christ, guys. I hope you know we can be free. Now it's going to be a process, it's a journey, and I have to be reminded daily. But God can free us from these things, and we can look to Him and say, God, we're going to let your word and we're going to let your truth define us. Secondly, we depend on God to equip us. How many of you would like to do something significant with your life? How many of you would like to leave a legacy? How many of you would like to do something that's going to last for eternity? I think everybody, right? I think that's almost kind of a rhetorical question. Here's what's so cool. God has, as we said earlier, he has equipped you, and he will equip you to do things that will leave an impact, that will leave an imprint. I love history. Anybody else love history in the room? I love history. But many of the successes, many of the victories in battle, many of the things in life, in this life that we celebrate and we remember, and we even have days on our calendar we celebrate, in the future life, they won't matter one bit. Are you with me? Like, there's a day coming when a lot of things in this life won't matter one bit. What will last? The things done for God. The things done through the power of God. And every single one of you, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ and you receive the Holy Spirit, you've been given spiritual gifts. At least one. And you're like, I don't know about that. I don't know if I have it. You have at least one gift, maybe more, that God wants to use you to have an impact for His kingdom. He wants to use you to impact others so that they might know Christ and they might grow in Christ. And so we depend on God to equip us. I'm not talking about your talents and your abilities here either, by the way. Those are awesome. God's given you some abilities in this room. Some of you are super creative, some of you guys are super smart and super organized. Some of you guys have really good skill sets and leading. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about your spiritual gifts. God equipped you, has given you gifts to do something that will last forever, to help people come to know Jesus. And finally, we trust in God to complete us. This is reiterating the same point I made earlier that God is the one who's faithful, he will complete the work he started in us. You ever feel discouraged in your process as a believer? Do you ever feel like, man, I'm trying hard, but I'm just not making any progress? Feel like, you know, you're trying to overcome a habit, an addiction that's just really hurting you and hurting others? You ever feel like you're at a place where you're just like, I just don't know if I can make it? I mean, I make it two days and then I go right back to the same old way. You ever feel like you get there? It's frustrating, isn't it? But here's the cool thing: God is faithful in our lives, and he will continue to complete the work he started in us. He will continue to help us so we trust in God to complete us. Some people have this mindset, and I heard it in my own life, and I've lived this way. Jesus Christ saved me by his grace, and now it's my job to work my way to being more like him. And I would just tell you this morning that it is the same grace that saved us, is the same grace that will help us grow up and mature in our faith in Christ. Titus, even Paul writes that to Titus, actually. He says, the same grace that brought salvation is the same grace that will help us say no to ungodliness and to live an upright life in this present generation. So if you want to really grow spiritually, ask God to help you. Because you're gonna need his help. You're gonna need his help to stop sinning. You're gonna need his help to start walking in truth. You're gonna need his help to remember your identity in Christ. And the cool thing is, is God doesn't say, What, you need my help? No, sorry for ya. Right? I mean, that would be pretty bad. That's not the guy we serve. He says, You need my help? Absolutely. When you call on me, I will answer you. I'll show up and I'll empower you and I will strengthen you as my child. So we look to God and trust in God to complete us. This is really setting us up for next week. Because when I read all these things and I think about these big ideas we've talked about this week, um, they're backwards from the way the world functions. They're backwards, uh, they're opposites. And that's the whole kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is inverted. Um, and so many times in our life we think, you know, that the church exists because man created it for God. But the scripture says, no, God calls the church into existence. Sometimes we think that we do all these great things for God, that we're the gifted, talented, able bodies that will do God's work. But the scripture says that God gifts his church so that it can grow. You see how the focus is on God? Sometimes we think that God, uh, it's not God's sustaining, it's that our strength, our pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, our American way, our American mindset, for those of you that are Americans in this room who really have been enculturated into this idea of self-reliance and independence. That it's us that does these things for God. But in all these things, we find that it's only God's grace that sustains. It's only God's grace that empowers, it's only God's grace that gives. And so God's grace leads us into true wisdom. And Paul's going to talk about this over the next few chapters, and we're gonna talk about this, these chapters together in the next few weeks. So, what do we do from here? Let me just give you a couple thoughts. If you're a believer in the room, if you're a Christ follower, you've already settled this issue of I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior and I'm his child. My question for us is is our focus on what we can do for God or what God can do in and through us? Many of us are still trying to operate as if it's our job to do things for God without his help, without his strength. And my invitation to you is to let God work, to invite God to work in your life. Are you working to accomplish what can only be done by God? Or are you resting in him? Are you trusting that he is the one who defines you, that you are loved, that you are valued, there you're something because of him. And if you're an unbeliever, like you've never put your faith in Christ, I mentioned two calls earlier. The invitation is wide open to receive the gift of salvation. That if you have never put your trust in Jesus to save you, that invitation is available today. And if you brought somebody with you who you know has never received the gift of salvation, listen, your job is to make sure they know that that invitation is open to them. It's available. It's my job to keep preaching and teaching that God's word, what God's word says, which is again, anyone who calls on the name of the Lord can be saved. But unbeliever in the room, is your heart stirred? Is your heart tugging? Is God doing something in you today? Is he revealing himself to you in a way that's saying it's time to stop resisting and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, receive the gift of salvation? Is that today? That's my prayer that it might be. Let's pray. God, thank you so much for uh the truth of your word. Thank you for the people that are in this room, that we get to gather together to worship you, to recenter our hearts on you. God, I confess that many, many times the things that I just taught are not true in my own life, in the way that I operate. That many times I'm seeking to do things for you more than receiving what you have done for me. God, I know that it's important to obey you, and I know it's important to follow you, and I know it's important to live a life that pleases you, but I can't do it without you. So I just pray, God, this morning, that you would help me to believe in my heart in a fresh way that Jesus, you saved me, and that Jesus, you will sustain me. And I pray that for every person in this room, I pray that you would rescue us. You would rescue us from ourselves. I pray that if there's anyone in this room who has never received the gift of salvation, they've never received the work you did, Jesus, on their behalf. That they would not only know that there's a big invitation, but there is a personal invitation. And that Holy Spirit, that you would invite them, you would buy your power to stir their hearts to receive this gift. We thank you. We love you. Help us as we go through this book to not just become more knowledgeable, but to worship you more. We praise in your name. Amen.